The entire building is Grade II listed and the Museum frontage is on Boyle Street, named after Councillor Daniel Boyle, the Chairman of the Manchester Corporation Tramways Committee which was responsible for electrifying the newly acquired tramway system, which had previously been run by private companies.

The Museum premises are divided into two main parts:

• The Upper Hall is the original Queens Road motorbus garage, added to the main tram depot in 1928. 
  
  
• The Lower Hall is a fill-in building, constructed on the tram depot’s rear yard and used as the washing shed for the motorbus fleet in the 1930s and 1940s.
  

The building continued to be used by Manchester Corporation Transport as a workshop and bus washing area until 1 May 1955 when buses were fully accommodated next door in Queens Road Garage. It was taken over some time later by the General Post Office (GPO) for use as a vehicle maintenance facility.
 
Greater Manchester Transport Society moved into the building in 1977 after it had been vacated by the GPO and the Museum of Transport first opened to the public in 1979.