On February 4, 1890, the Sausalito News reported that A.D. Scott would erect a fine store and move his general merchandise business to the town site. Alexander Dill Scott, who emigrated from Nova Scotia, built his store at this location. The post office operated in the store from 1891 to 1896 and again from 1900 to 1914. In 1908, J.W. Cain installed a small frame switchboard with a ten-phone line capacity. A large upstairs room, referred to as Scott's Hall, hosted plays, meetings, and religious services, and Novato's 4-H Club and the Druids held their first meetings there. In 1945, Pini Hardware occupied the building after a fire at their Grant Avenue location. In the 1970s, Johnson's Red Barn furniture store occupied it, and later a publisher moved out when the floor buckled under the weight of his books. In 1979, a fire damaged much of the building's interior, but the exterior remains preserved.