Liberty Park, an elevated park at the World Trade Center site, is scheduled to open this summer (though there isn’t an exact opening date yet), according to DNAinfo. In 2013, the New York Times reported that this park, which will clock in at just over an acre, was the development’s “best kept secret.”
For tourists, Liberty Park will offer a view onto the 9/11 Memorial and will sit alongside the St. Nicholas National Shrine, designed by architect Santiago Calatrava who was behind the World Trade Center Transportation Hub. The shrine will not open until 2017. For residents, the elevated park will provide a new pedestrian connection over West Street, and a far nicer one than the infrequent cross walks and utilitarian bridges. For the Port Authority, the elevated park conceals a functional purpose: the WTC vehicle security center.
Special attention has been paid to the landscaping at this park. There will be a 300 foot long, 20 foot high living wall of vegetation connected structurally to a staircase from street level, including periwinkle, Japanese spurge, and Baltic ivy. There are 54 trees planned for the park, including honey locusts, witch hazel, serviceberry, hybrid dogwood and a sapling from a descendant of the Anne Frank Horse Chestnut Tree in Amsterdam that Frank mentioned in her World War II diary. The World Trade Center is just one of eleven locations that the chestnut tree sapling have been planted in the United States.
A sculpture that will be located in Liberty Park include The Sphere, which is currently in Battery Park – though there has been a so-far unsuccessful movement to relocate the sphere to the 9/11 Memorial Plaza.
Next, read about the Top 10 Secrets of the 9/11 Memorial.
