The Osborne's facade is clad in rusticated blocks of brownstone, with a main entrance on 57th Street and a variety of window configurations.

The southern section of the building, facing 57th Street, is 11 stories tall and originally contained main living spaces with high ceilings.

The $2 million construction cost forced Thomas Osborne into foreclosure, leading Taylor's family to acquire the building in 1889.

[16] By the 21st century, the artistic hub had largely been replaced with Billionaires' Row, a series of luxury skyscrapers around the southern end of Central Park.

[17] The Osborne was also part of a hub of luxury buildings developed on the northernmost end of Seventh Avenue, around Carnegie Hall, by 1900.

[33] The namesake and developer, Thomas Osborne, expected that the facade could attract residents of middle-class brownstone row houses.

[38] The northernmost Seventh Avenue bay also contains three shorter stories in the double-height base, with two rectangular windows on either mezzanine floor.

[37] On the 3rd through 6th stories, the original section of the 57th Street facade contains triple-sided, stone-clad oriel windows on the first, fourth, fifth, and eighth bays from the east.

[38] The 3rd through 6th stories of the northernmost Seventh Avenue bay contain six offset duplex levels, each with a triple-sided, stone-clad oriel window.

[42][43] The lobby was mainly the work of Holzer[23][44] and is designed in marble, mosaics, murals, gilded surfaces, and leaded glass.

The western and eastern walls of the lobby contain marble wainscoting, interspersed with plaster plaques of nude figures and garlands, designed to resemble bronze.

[58] The rear sections had bedrooms and private baths, separated from the main living areas by flights of seven steps, and the ceilings are just over 8 feet (2.4 m) high.

[54] The apartment designs were also marked by their elaborate interior features, including mahogany wood decoration, bronze fireplace mantels, and crystal chandeliers.

[56][49][c] Simultaneously, West 57th Street was being developed with townhouses, some of which were known as New York City's "choicest" residences, as well as artists' studio apartments.

[6] At the time, the street's developments included the Rembrandt Studio Building, the Calvary Baptist Church, and various row houses.

[69] The original plans included a fireproof structure with four elevators; some iron-and-marble staircases; various spaces such as a florist and pharmacy; and the newest electric, plumbing, and heating systems of the time.

[71] Advertisements in New York City newspapers boasted, in boldface letters, that the building was "the most magnificently finished and decorated apartment house in the world".

[72] The development of the Osborne spurred the construction of nearby apartment houses, including the Alwyn Court and Rodin Studios.

[74] The building had ultimately cost $2 million to construct, at least part of which was covered by loans that John H. Taylor had made to Osborne.

[75][76] The next year, Ware expanded the attic to a full size; this provided additional room for servants' quarters while placing the roof at a uniform height.

[23] Contemporary advertisements described the Osborne as occupying "the highest ground below Fifty-seventh Street"; this feature became more attractive to potential tenants, as the state government had passed the Daly Law in 1885 to limit similar structures to five or six stories.

[49][83] In 1961, the Osborne was sold to the Linland Corporation,[34] operated by real-estate investor Sarah Korein, in a deal that valued the building at $2.5 million (equivalent to $25,489,978 in 2023).

[88] Davida Tenenbaum Deutsch, an architectural historian who lived in the building, started holding bazaars in 1976 to fund the restoration of the lobby, ultimately raising nearly $100,000 (equivalent to $535,439 in 2023).

[90] After the city's Open Restaurants program (first implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic) became permanent in early 2022, the Osborne's co-op board sued 57th and 7th Associates, to which the building's commercial space was leased.

The co-op board claimed that 57th and 7th Associates had failed to enforce restrictions regarding the use by sub-tenants of the building's commercial spaces, including the installation of outdoor dining and unauthorized signage.

[91] Despite its proximity to Carnegie Hall and West 57th Street's arts hub, the Osborne did not have any musicians, artists, or authors listed as residents prior to World War II, and only two architects were recorded as living there during that time.

[60] Notable residents have included: An unnamed critic for the New York Evening Post reviewed the design negatively, writing in 1884, "An attempt has been made by Mr. Jas.

[71] The next year, a critic for the Real Estate Record negatively regarded the design as "crude and unskillful", and wrote that "there is nothing architecturally interesting about the Osborne, except the grouping of the stories, and here and there some carving that is good in execution".

[23][117] In 2020, The New York Times described the Osborne as "kind of grand but dour", as opposed to the "extravagantly ornate" Alwyn Court across the street.

"[42] Roger Starr, writing for The New York Times in 1983, stated that the ornate lobby demonstrated that "even the most powerful families in the country can live well in apartments".