Liberty Plaza

 skyscraper, apartment building

510-foot, 45-story postmodern residential building completed in 2004. Designed by Stephen B. Jacobs Group, the tower is set back from a landscaped plaza with a fountain on Cedar Street. The Liberty and Williams Street sides are only slightly set back, and surrounded by small trees and shrubbery behind a wrought-iron fence with rusticated stone pillars atop a low granite wall.

The building has a 4-story base, with the tall ground floor clad in rusticated limestone. The main entrance on Liberty Street is centered below a segmental-arch with a flat keystone, with brass infill and a revolving door. Above a stone bandcourse, the top three floors of the base are clad in salmon-colored brick, with additional stone band courses across the tops of the 2nd & 4th floors. The windows on these floors have stone frames, and curved, black metal grilles at their bases; the openings are double-height spanning the 3rd-4th floors. The end bays of the base on the Liberty Street side project forward, with plantings on top, and with chamfered corners where they meet the center bays.

The tower portion rises up from the base, set back on the west (William Street) side, with chamfered corners. There are four angled notches running up the north facade, and two on the eastern half of the south facade. In between are projecting bay windows of dark-tinted glass, with air conditioning vents below each group. The western half of the south facade, and the west facade have wider areas of projecting bay windows, without the inset notches. The various facets of the tower facade give it a rhythmic feel. A tall, set-back, brick mechanical penthouse caps the tower.

Liberty Plaza contains 287 rental apartments, as well as a 200-car parking garage accessed from Liberty Street.