Elevated park opens at WTC site, overlooks 9/11 memorial
An elevated park that offers a new view to visitors at the World Trade Center opened Wednesday, built atop a security center that screens vehicles and overlooking the memorial to those who died in the Sept. 11 attacks.
The one-acre Liberty Park, a $50 million project, is modeled after Manhattan’s High Line – the abandoned railroad tracks that were transformed into one of the world’s most visited green spaces. The park features the newly planted “Living Wall,” a vertical garden.
Underneath the park, the Vehicle Security Center screens trucks and other vehicles before they enter subterranean roads with loading docks crossing the entire trade center. Tour buses will be added sometime in the future.
The park was created by landscape architect Joseph Brown, with its most unusual feature being the Living Wall. The 25-by-336-foot green wall facing Liberty Street is covered with more than 22,000 plants in 826 soil-filled panels – from periwinkle, Japanese spurge and Baltic ivy to goldenstar, coral bells and winter creeper. The plants are kept watered by irrigation tubes with tiny weep holes. (AP)
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