World Trade Center’s Elevated Park Comes Into Focus
By Billy Gray November 22, 2013 4:54 pm
reprintsFresh off 1 World Trade Center‘s official designation as America’s tallest building, the WTC complex is more modestly reaching skyward with the elevated Liberty Park.
Word of the expanse, which is 25 feet above Liberty Street and just larger than an acre, has been out for a while. But recent renderings have helped clarify what the project will entail.
Last week, the Port Authority announced that Liberty Park will hold up to 750 people at a time, offer a perch from which to view the National September 11 Memorial, cut a serene path between the Financial District and Battery Park City and provide a forecourt for the rebuilt Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, which was destroyed during the 9/11 attack.
The New York Times reported that the Port Authority lifted the veil on park plans after architect Santiago Calatrava, who is designing the rebuilt church, released renderings of his project and its leafy surroundings. Landscape architect Joseph Brown is Liberty Park’s principal designer. Among its crowning features is a 20-foot high, 30-foot long “living wall” or vertical garden home to winter creeper, sedge, Japanese spurge, periwinkle and Baltic ivy.
Port Authority officials estimate that the park will cost $50 million and should open in 2015.
