The building is an Italian-style townhouse, built in 1873 as planned by Juan Antonio Buschiazzo, one of the architects brought in the mid 19th-Century to Argentina by Bernardino Rivadavia. At the time, it housed the executive, legislative and judicial powers of the federal government, when they had to leave Buenos Aires. The National Congress, met in the biggest of it meeting when they declared Buenos Aires as the nation's capital, under president Avellaneda.