The 28th Street station was constructed for the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) as part of the city's first subway line, which was approved in 1900.

[5]: 21  However, development of what would become the city's first subway line did not start until 1894, when the New York State Legislature passed the Rapid Transit Act.

It called for a subway line from New York City Hall in lower Manhattan to the Upper West Side, where two branches would lead north into the Bronx.

[5]: 161  The Rapid Transit Construction Company, organized by John B. McDonald and funded by August Belmont Jr., signed the initial Contract 1 with the Rapid Transit Commission in February 1900,[7] in which it would construct the subway and maintain a 50-year operating lease from the opening of the line.

[6]: 4  Belmont incorporated the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) in April 1902 to operate the subway.

East Side local trains ran from City Hall to Lenox Avenue (145th Street).

[11] To address overcrowding, in 1909, the New York Public Service Commission proposed lengthening the platforms at stations along the original IRT subway.

[12]: 168  As part of a modification to the IRT's construction contracts made on January 18, 1910, the company was to lengthen station platforms to accommodate ten-car express and six-car local trains.

[20] The perpetrator of the bombings is unknown; they were initially blamed on Galleanists (as Sacco and Vanzetti had been denied appeal three days prior), though police later believed they were unrelated.

[4]: 8  The work was completed by early 1989,[33] having been delayed by nine months because of setbacks in the delivery of new light fixtures.

Additional columns between the tracks, spaced every 5 feet (1.5 m), support the jack-arched concrete station roofs.

The platform walls are divided at 15-foot (4.6 m) intervals by buff mosaic tile pilasters, or vertical bands.

Atop the pilasters are pairs of cruciform faience plaques with the words 28 twenty-eighth street, surrounded by foliate designs and rosettes.

The far southern end of the southbound platform has square ceramic tiles topped by marble belt courses.

[4]: 6  The fare control areas at 28th Street contain various maintenance rooms and were retiled with large rectangular ceramic blocks in 1989.

The first was a glass block wall artwork at the main fare control by Gerald Marks, entitled Seven Waves 4 Twenty-Eight.

[4]: 7  Seven Waves 4 Twenty-Eight was replaced by Roaming Underfoot, a glass mosaic mural on the platform walls by Nancy Blum.

[54] Roaming Underfoot showcases flora in the Madison Square Park Conservancy's Perennial Collection and was installed during the 2018 renovation.

[4]: 6 [56] These stairs contain simple, modern steel railings like those seen at most New York City Subway stations.

[4]: 6  These stairs also contain next-train countdown clocks and neighborhood wayfinding maps at the exterior of each entrance, which were installed in the 2019 renovation.

[56] The latter entrance replaced two staircases right outside the building, at the southwestern corner of 28th Street and Park Avenue South.

[4]: 6 A second fare control area at the southern end of the southbound platform leads to a privately operated passageway in the basement of the New York Life Building, between 26th and 27th Streets.