A direct means of making Harlem's first apartment buildings more attractive to potential tenants was the practice of including an ornate banking room on the ground floor. In fact, before 1920, bank buildings that did not include apartment suites were uncommon.

The Mount Morris Bank/Morris Apartments was the result of a limited competition that included McKim, Mead & White. Designed by Lamb & Rich and completed in 1884, the structure housed apartments that were later transformed into offices. Splendidly devised, the cherry-red brick and terra-cotta structure exhibited a stylistic lineage derived from Romanesque, Queen Anne, and Dutch sources. It was one of Lamb's great achievements.

One of about six small banks founded in late nineteenth-century Harlem, the Mount Morris Bank was by 1913 absorbed by a mightier citywide financial institution, the Corn Exchange Bank. The building itself was partially destroyed by arson in 1997.