Liberty Park finally opens on June 29.
BY YANNIC RACK
Lower Manhattan’s very own High Line is ready to welcome its first visitors.
Liberty Park, the long-anticipated elevated green space overlooking the 9/11 Memorial at the World Trade Center, will open to the public at 11:45 a.m. on Wednesday, June 29.
The one-acre park sits 25 feet high atop the WTC Vehicle Security Center on Liberty St. and includes more than 50 trees, ample seating and a “Living Wall” of greenery along the building’s north façade.
“The park, a smaller scale version of Manhattan’s iconic High Line built on top of the World Trade Center Vehicle Security Center and surrounding the future St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, will provide workers, residents and tourists a tranquil setting overlooking the National September 11 Memorial Plaza and One World Trade Center,” the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said in a statement announcing the opening.
The $50-million plaza was designed by landscape architect Stephen E. Brown and has full-length views of the Freedom Tower. It will connect to the high-end Brookfield Place shopping center across West St. by the Liberty St. Pedestrian Bridge, which will also open on Wednesday.
The park has capacity for 750 people and includes 19 planters filled with trees, shrubs and perennial flowers. Last month, a sapling grown from the original horse chestnut tree in Amsterdam that inspired Anne Frank as she hid from the Nazis was planted there.
One of the park’s most striking features is the 336-foot long “Living Wall” — a vertical garden that runs along the center’s north façade on Liberty St. to mask its driveways with more than 22,000 plants.
In addition, the park functions as a green roof and has several other sustainable features, including reclaimed teakwood for the guardrails and benches, as well as efficient LED lighting, according to the Port Authority.
Downtowners and visitors alike will be able to enjoy most of the park starting this week, but construction will continue on its eastern end, where the St. Nicholas National Shrine is being built.
The shrine, a Santiago Calatrava-designed reincarnation of St. Nicholas Church, which was destroyed during 9/11, is set to open in 2018.
But Liberty Park is not the only new green space Downtowners can take advantage of this summer. The Oval, the two-acre lawn at the center of The Battery, opened over the weekend with the Battery Fair, a market festival showcasing the wares of 90 local vendors and farmers.
