If you click on the link below you can see the building in 1940.  The image shows Portland Street looking from Oxford Street.  On the right of the image is the Behrens Warehouse, which runs back along Portland Street from the corner.  Beyond it is a lower building that is very similar in style.  That would be the original warehouse which was then numbered 123 and 125 Portland Street with 123 being the one closest to the corner.

The puzzle about this building is that the 1953 building in the aerial photograph appears to be the same height as its neighbour.  Clearly the building that was on this site in 1940 wasn't the same height.  This suggests that at some point between 1940 and 1953 a new taller building occupied the site.  However the building that is there today looks too modern to have been built prior to 1953.  This might suggest that the building seen in the 1940 image was demolished and replaced by the building we see in the 1953 aerial photograph.  This was then demolished and replaced by the building we see today.  Until I find a date for the present building I can only speculate.

Below is my version of a segment of a map dated 1888 and it shows the corner of Portland Street and Dickinson Street.  As you can see at that time J. B. Johnson & Co occupied 123.  Around the corner was 40 Dickinson Street, known as the Beaver Packing House.

The Manchester & Salford Directory for 1909 lists E. Ascoli & Son as the occupant of 125 Portland Street along with Joseph Hampson and Sam J. Levi & Co, merchants.  The Beaver Packing House was described as belonging to Lloyds Packing Warehouse Ltd, makers-up and packers.

By 1927 Bell Brothers & Co (Textiles) Ltd, shippers were operating out of 125 along with Alfred Kay & Co, cotton manufacturers and Alexander Collie & Co.,  E. Mellon & Co were the occupants of Beaver House.