Schiff base (E)-2-[(benzo[d]thiazol-2-ylimino)methyl]phenol (1) has been synthesized from the reaction of 2-hydroxy-benzaldehyde with 2-aminobenzothiazole. The 2-[(benzo[d]thiazol-2-ylamino)methyl]phenol (2) was prepared reduction of the Schiff base 1 with sodium borohydride. The compounds 1 and 2 have been characterized by elemental analysis, FT-IR, 1H-NMR, 13C-NMR and UV–visible spectroscopic techniques. The structure of the compound 2 has also been examined crystallographically. The compound 2 crystallizes in the monoclinic space group P2/c. The unit cell parameters were found as a = 10.017(1), b = 11.725(1), c = 10.341(1) A, V = 1208.1(1) A3, D x = 1.409 g cm−3 and Z = 4. The crystal structure was solved by direct methods and refined by the full-matrix least squares method and found as R 1 = 0.0308 and wR 2 = 0.0818 for 2032 for the observed reflections [I > 2σ(I)]. Crystal and molecular structure of the compound 2-[(benzo[d]thiazol-2-ylamino)methyl]phenol have been studied in order to reveal the presence of either the enol-imine or keto-amine forms related with hydrogen bonding by using FT-IR, 1H-NMR, 13C-NMR, UV–visible spectroscopic and X-ray crystallographic techniques.