 The original pre-fire building was designed by locally famous and prominent architect John Rudolph Niernsee in 1880 and was used by the old Corn and Flour Exchange, which maintained a trading floor on the fifth level.It was later occupied during the 1990s by the Baltimore International Culinary College (later renamed the Baltimore International College) as one of their utilized buildings on an urban campus of nearby city blocks and later taken over by Stratford University, a for-profit educational institution.Currently it has been renovated to function as a Staybridge Suites - Baltimore Inner Harbor Hotel.