The seat building of the Ministry of Health, originally designed to house the offices of the Department of Health and Hygiene by the architect Carlos Obregon Santacilia, was built on a site in the form of irregular trapeze bounded by the avenues of Paseo de la Reforma and Chapultepec and through the streets of Lieja and Jose Vasconcelos, and was the first building built by the post revolutionary government specifically for public administration.

Its construction began in October 1925, being president Plutarco Elías Calles, and the building was inaugurated in November 1929 by then-president Emilio Portes Gil. As can be seen is located in a privileged location: on one side of the door of the lions of the Chapultepec forest, where in those years, the castle was the official residence of the President of Mexico and therefore the first building that saw, in his daily route toward the National Palace, was the Department of Health and Hygiene.

The architectural program of the building resulted primarily from home offices, although at that time in the Department of Health and Hygiene functions were developed of research in laboratories. It was also raised several areas for services such as customer service, classrooms, printing and even a jail or area of cells for offenders by consumption of drugs.  

The building is on the periphery of a ground semi-trapezoid with three levels of height for office use, leaving in the center a large open space. The facades marked with a predominance regular rhythm in the ground floor and half point arc in the second level, creating corridors in form of open space, central porches perimeter in the first two floors and circulations discovered in the third level. These broad corridors make up the entrances to the office areas. The structure of the building is mixed with steel riveting and mezzanine of reinforced concrete and facades of gray stone quarry "xaltocan" and skirtings of black precincts that you print a character of sobriety and elegance to the monument. The exterior facade of reece presence, are resolved with between streets vertical strips separated by three orders of windows facing massive vertical breaking the linearity of the volumes.

The compositional outline of the building, large horizontal and noticeably asymmetrical, consists of three large and massive building blocks: a main facade with access to Paseo de la Reforma and two rectangular parallel to the streets of Lieja and Jose Vasconcelos, joined each with the main body by unique bridges of steel-lined copper foil cocked framing majestically. These bridges are a very unique solution that aims to combine the edge urban space with architectural space.

The volume principal with facade to Reforma was designed with the intention of hosting the office of head of the ministry in a simile with the human body. In this area which would correspond to the brain and the other two blocks extremities of the body whose functions would be to provide medical care to society. A fourth volume closes the composition onto avenue Chapultepec creating with other bodies a generous landscaped open space at the center. In the rear and the central axis of the composition of lifting the tower water reservoir which prints a great presence and solidity to the building, and it becomes a recognizable city landmark.