With a ubiquitous façade that has featured on many a photograph and commemorative item, on Thursday – just days before the start of the Hebrew year 5770 – the famous brick structure at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, N.Y., entered its 70th year as headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.

Purchased in the summer of 1940, the brick building was formally inaugurated as the movement’s headquarters on the 21st day of the Hebrew month of Elul by the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory, who delivered a Chasidic discourse that day on the statement from the Ethics of the Sages that “the world rests upon three things.”

The setting of countless individual memories and imbued with a holiness indicative of the work that took place inside, the building served as the Sixth Rebbe’s residence and office until his passing in 1950. It was also home to the office – and much later, the residence – of his successor, the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory.

From a relatively small, book-lined room at the northeast corner of the structure, the Rebbe welcomed foreign diplomats, rank-and-file Jews of all ages and backgrounds for private audiences, earning the address a place among such iconic locations as 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and 10 Downing Street. On Sundays in the late 1980s and early 1990s, hundreds of thousands of people lined up outside in order to have a short moment with the Rebbe, who gave his blessings and advice, and distributed to each visitor dollar bills to be given to charity.

In recent years, a slew of Chabad Houses have looked to the building for architectural inspiration, while others have built almost-exact copies. The most-famous reproduction sits in the central Israeli village of Kfar Chabad.