Liberty Park

Parks don't have to be green. The brand new Liberty Park, built atop the agonizingly named World Trade Center Vehicle Security Center and Tour Bus Parking Facility in lower Manhattan, is an acre of modernist walkways, weirdly angled wooden benches, and planters overlooking the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

When it opened on June 29, 2016, Gothamist called it "sparkling". The New York Times extolled its "touches of whimsy" and predicted it was "sure to become a popular destination, particularly when a half-dozen young honey locusts and other trees mature into a dappled canopy over an exposed, hard-edged expanse."

As yet, the hard edges still dominate, and on a pleasant early spring day as the workday came to a close, only a few people were using the park for anything but a route from one place to another.

At the western end, the new St. Nicholas National Shrine, designed by Santiago Calatrava, was taking shape (more rapidly than the honey locusts). It will replace the original St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, which was destroyed by the September 11 attacks.

The planters were looking nice – perhaps an augury of urban-bucolic things to come.

And the views of One World Trade Center and the other shiny new buildings are unbeatable.

All photos © Jon Sobel, Critical Lens Media

Zuccotti Park

This is one of those parks that can get so clogged with people, it's hard to see there's a park at all underneath all that human flesh. But you can still manage to make out the contours of Zuccotti Park, formerly called Liberty Plaza Park and recently renamed after after the real estate baron who financed its renovation after it was drowned in 9-11 debris. (The park is catty-corner to what we are no longer calling Ground Zero.)

Re-opened in 2006, the park is much greener than in its previous incarnation, with over 50 trees on just three quarters of an acre.



The big red sculpture is Joie de Vivre by noted sculptor Mark di Suvero, who just happens to be married to New York City's Commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs.

According to Wikipedia, di Suvero was born Marco Polo Levy in Shanghai, China—a much more interesting if less musical-sounding moniker if you ask me. (No one asked me, but it's my blog.)

Looks kind of like something you ought to be able to climb on, if you ask me (no one asked me, but, well, you know). Anyway, if you can find a place to sit, Zuccotti Park is a nice lower Manhattan break from the skyscrapers and traffic. Here are some flowers in late spring:



And the same oval in early autumn: