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The new park will be a shady public sanctuary in busy Lower Manhattan*
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By summer 2006, 55 new trees will bloom there. Two remarkable pieces of art will add decoration. Dozens of shady benches will provide respite to tourists and prime lunching spots for workers and residents.
Welcome to the future Liberty Plaza Park.
Located between Broadway, Trinity Place, Liberty, and Cedar Streets, the park is undergoing a reconstruction that will create a public sanctuary in the heart of bustling Lower Manhattan. Owner Brookfield Properties, with the help of architects Cooper Robertson and other collaborators, kicked off the $8 million renovation on July 18 -- adding another major private investment to the area's revitalization.
Rebuilding the park, which was already due for a restoration of its unstable, sub-grade foundation, became a priority for Brookfield after the 9/11 recovery effort. Cleanup and emergency vehicles and equipment were staged in the plaza for months following the attacks, cracking and denting its pavement and further stressing its foundation.
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| The circular bench on the park's NW corner will be home to "Double Check" |
The new design is a welcome change from the previous incarnation of Liberty Plaza Park's all-pavement, barebones layout, bringing welcome foliage to the Financial District's skyscraper canyons. "This is a true amenity for Lower Manhattan," Brookfield Vice President Sabrina Kanner says. "It's a dense and compact neighborhood -- so you really notice and enjoy a park."
Fifty-four hearty honey locust trees will be planted across the park's nearly 33,000 square feet, along with one towering London plane tree, which will sit at the northwest corner, nearest to Ground Zero.
A granite bench will encircle the London plane, where one permanent guest will be seated: a bronze sculpture called "Double Check." The piece, by New Jersey-based artist J. Seward Johnson Jr., is of a life-size, seated businessman peering into his briefcase and was a Liberty Plaza Park fixture for decades.
The sculpture, still intact but with a coating of Trade Center dust, became a makeshift memorial after 9/11 and was eventually returned to the artist -- who then cast a new "Double Check" and decorated it with bronze accoutrements identical to those left in tribute after the attacks. (That twin sculpture will be installed this fall at Liberty State Park, across the Hudson in Jersey City.)
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| Mark di Suvero's towering "Joie de Vivre" will adorn the park's SE corner ** |
Decorating Liberty Plaza Park's southeast corner is another sculpture, a soaring steel piece titled "Joie de Vivre." The 70-foot-tall, bright red sculpture by Mark di Suvero will be a marker along Broadway, easily seen from City Hall and down adjacent streets. It will complement the giant, red "Noguchi's Cube" across the street at 140 Broadway.
The redesigned park will bring several logistical improvements. Most notable among them will be the diagonal layout of benches and the center pathway, which will help accommodate the tens of thousands pedestrians who walk between the northwest and southeast corners every day.
On their way through the park, passersby will notice the "Atlantic pink" granite pavement and more than twice the seating of the original park -- all installed on the same diagonal as the center path. Planters at the park's southwest and northeast corners, as well as throughout the park's interior, will yield color and seasonal plantings.
Illuminating the park are nearly 500 thin, rectangular, in-ground fluorescent lights, specially designed to be water- and air-tight, as well as easily replaceable. The Alliance for Downtown New York will supply additional street lamps along Broadway, as well as Ticker-Tape Parade granite sidewalk markers, consistent with its downtown "Streetscape" program.
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| Liberty Plaza Park's $8 million renovation began July 18 |
Logistically, the 10-month project will involve demolition and excavation down to about eight feet sub grade, followed by recompacting the soil below to create a level base and prevent future uneven settlement. Because the park was built over Temple Street, which ran north-south through the center of the park until the 1960s, contractor Turner Construction is prepared to coordinate leftover underground infrastructure work with the city and utility companies.
Apart from the closure of Liberty Plaza Park, sidewalks, streets, and bus lanes will be minimally affected by the project. Staging for the reconstruction will occupy eight feet of Liberty Street, but the street will otherwise remain open to vehicles.
Stay tuned to www.LowerManhattan.info/construction for traffic revisions and other updates. Click here to read the Liberty Plaza Park project update.
* Images courtesy of Cooper Robertson Partners
** Images courtesy of the Artist and Spacetime C.C.
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