The building contains an interior skeleton of structural steel, several ornamental features on the facade, as well as a floor plan that maximizes natural light exposure.

[10] The southern facade of the Bowling Green Offices Building is visible above the International Mercantile Marine Company to the south.

The Real Estate Record and Guide said in 1897 that the Bowling Green Offices Building had "more anthemia than any other work with which we are acquainted".

The Greenwich Street facade is 18 stories high, with a full basement faced with brick and granite, since it is at a lower terrain elevation than Broadway.

[13] The north facade is mostly blocked by the Cunard Building; the visible section consists of a brick wall with windows.

The standpipes could maintain a pressure of 200 pounds per square inch (1,400 kPa), which would allow 160 U.S. gallons (610 L) of water per minute to be projected 66 feet (20 m) in a 0.75-inch (19 mm) stream.

[22] The site of the Bowling Green Offices Building was occupied by Dutch houses after the colony of New Amsterdam was founded in the 17th century.

[4] The Bowling Green Offices Building's site was owned by lawyer Joseph F. Stier, who sold the land in June 1895[4][27][11] to Stacy C.

[4][28] The next month, the then-new Broadway Realty Company submitted plans for the site to the New York City Department of Buildings.

The company was led by five men and had a board of directors that included Stier and Richmond, as well as philanthropist Spencer Trask,[4] who, being the largest stakeholder in the building, would maintain a suite on the top floor for several years.

[29][5] The precise details of how Audsley became involved in the project is not clear, though he may have been hired through association with George Foster Peabody, who was Trask's principal partner.

[10] According to one source, the Bowling Green Offices Building was built "by British interests" with funding from Queen Victoria.

[35] Profits from the Bowling Green Offices Building went toward funding Yaddo, the artists' community in Saratoga Springs, New York, that had been founded by Trask.

The Department of Taxes ruled that the assessment was justified, but the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court overruled the decision.

The firm redesigned the staircases on the Broadway side in 1912–1913 by moving the front steps inward and removing or reconfiguring part of the facade.

A few years later, the Broadway Realty Company planned to add five more stories at the top of the building to designs by Ludlow and Peabody, but due to steel shortages caused by World War I, the work was not completed until 1919–1920.

[12][16][11] Building plans in 1938 indicate there was a restaurant, likely facing Greenwich Street, and a photo from the same year indicated that storefronts had been added on Broadway to either side of the center stoop.

[7][41] However, the LPC stated that Broadway Realty continued to own the building until 1978, or at least the land beneath it,[4] citing the company's Restatement of Certificate of Incorporation filed that year.

[42] According to a former director of Yaddo, the community held the controlling interest in the Bowling Green Offices Building until 1976, as opposed to outright ownership.

[52] Other tenants included the United States Department of the Navy's Supervisor of Shipbuilding, as well as the Merchant Marine Committee of the Whole.

[7] Later in the 20th century, space in the Bowling Green Offices Building was taken up by Ivan Boesky, a stock trader implicated in insider trading,[47] as well as the technology company IBM.

Although architectural writers Sarah Landau and Carl Condit wrote in 1996 that the Bowling Green Offices was "a major work of the [1890s] in both design and size", it was ignored "perhaps because it was completed in a boom building period or because its 'Hellenic Renaissance' style was considered so peculiar".

The reviewer continued: "If the architects had been less solicitous for novelty and had abstained from trying to produce 'an order practically unique', their building would have been much better".

[9] A 1998 letter to the editor, published in The New York Times, said that 11 Broadway's design was "for those who wish to enjoy the architecture of" Scottish architect Alexander Thomson.