World Trade Center's Liberty Park opens overlooking the 9/11 Memorial in Lower Manhattan
LOWER MANHATTAN (WABC) -- New York City's newest park is now open to the public.
Liberty Park comes with a deep and emotional meaning: The elevated, one-acre park overlooks the 9/11 Memorial.
The $50 million park sits on a site once occupied by the Deutsche Bank building, and passersby were able to get their first glimpse as it opened Wednesday.
The park overlooks the original footprints of the World Trade Center, now the National September 11 Memorial Plaza and One World Trade Center.
Elevated on Liberty Street, the park holds 750 people and contains 19 planters filled with trees, shrubs and perennials.
"We cast a gaze out, there's Liberty Street before us and beyond that is the 9/11 Memorial which you can see from here," said Glenn Guzi. of the Port Authority. "And this is a really nice way to take in the entire World Trade Center site in what is kind of a very private intimate way as well."
One of the park's most striking features is a Living Wall, a creative vertical garden that runs along the north facing facade of Liberty Street, masking the driveways to the Vehicle Security Center. The wall, 336 feet long and 25 feet high, is built with a total of 826 panels that will be filled with 22,356 plants of six different varieties.
