By Jared Ebersole in Video — 03 Jun 2026

The Skyscraper That Used a Plaza to Save Lower Manhattan

One Chase Manhattan Plaza used an old zoning rule to rise as a clean slab, then turned its leftover ground into one of Lower Manhattan's great modern plazas.

28 Liberty Street looks calm because it was built as an argument.

Where it is

28 Liberty Street, New York, NY 10005

When it opened as One Chase Manhattan Plaza, the tower did not behave like the older Financial District around it. Lower Manhattan was dense, narrow, and canyon-like, filled with masonry towers that rose from the lot line and crowded the street. Chase built something different: a clean International Style slab standing in open space.

That open space was not decorative generosity.

It was the key that made the tower possible.

The story begins with a bank merger. Chase National Bank and the Bank of the Manhattan Company combined in the 1950s, creating one of the largest banks in the country. The new Chase Manhattan Bank had thousands of employees scattered across multiple locations, and it needed a headquarters that could consolidate operations while projecting power.

David Rockefeller, then a senior Chase executive, pushed for Lower Manhattan.

That was not an obvious choice. Midtown was gaining corporate momentum. Lower Manhattan still had financial prestige, but many of its buildings were old, its streets were cramped, and its future as a modern headquarters district was uncertain. Chase's decision to stay downtown was meant to do more than solve a real-estate problem. It was a confidence play for the neighborhood.

The site strategy was radical for the Financial District.

Under the 1916 Zoning Resolution, New York buildings typically had to set back as they rose, producing the stepped "wedding cake" skyline of the early 20th century. But the rules had an escape hatch: if a tower occupied only a small portion of its lot, it could rise as a more vertical slab without the same setbacks. Chase and Skidmore, Owings & Merrill used that logic. The tower occupied roughly 28 to 30 percent of its site, leaving the rest for a broad plaza.

The result was a 60-story building, 813 feet tall, designed by SOM with Gordon Bunshaft as the key design figure. Its stainless-steel-and-glass facade was precise, corporate, and cool. The structure grouped columns around the perimeter and core, making open office floors possible. When it opened, it could accommodate thousands of employees with far fewer private offices than a traditional bank headquarters would have used.

But the plaza created a problem of its own.

Banks need public-facing space. Customers need to enter, wait, transact, and feel that the institution is solid. Yet the tower's ground plane was largely given over to openness, and much of the working bank had to go below the plaza. That could have produced exactly the wrong feeling: the great modern headquarters above, the actual banking room buried like a basement.

Isamu Noguchi solved it with a circle.

Noguchi's Sunken Garden sits below the surface of the plaza, visible through a circular opening about 60 feet across. It is a Japanese-inspired rock garden with basalt stones, white granite blocks, water, and a curved glass enclosure. From above, it punctures the hard plaza with stillness. From below, it brings daylight and a view into the banking/concourse level.

The move is subtle but powerful.

It turns underground space into civic theater. Customers did not simply descend into a basement. They entered a room organized around light, water, stone, and air. The garden made the below-grade condition feel intentional, even privileged. In a district built on money and compression, Noguchi created a moment of quiet.

That quiet was part of the building's broader confidence.

One Chase Manhattan Plaza was not trying to blend into old Wall Street. It was trying to modernize it. The tower and plaza said that Lower Manhattan could have the same open-space modernism associated with Midtown corporate projects, but with downtown scale and financial authority. The building became both a headquarters and an urban-renewal signal.

It also showed the double edge of modern planning.

The plaza gave light and breathing room to a crowded district, but it was private property, elevated above surrounding streets, and not as naturally porous as older public streets. The project was civic-minded and corporate at the same time. It created public-feeling space by removing older blocks and concentrating power in one enormous institution.

That ambiguity is why 28 Liberty remains interesting.

It was designated a New York City landmark in 2009, long after the International Style had gone from futuristic to historic. JPMorgan Chase sold the building in 2013, and it was later renamed 28 Liberty Street. The tenants changed, the plaza changed, and the Financial District changed around it. But the basic composition still reads clearly: tower, plaza, void, garden.

The building's real achievement is not just height.

It is the way zoning, corporate ambition, and art were braided together. The old law produced the tower shape. The bank's consolidation produced the scale. Rockefeller's downtown bet produced the location. Noguchi's garden rescued the underground public room from feeling like a compromise.

From the sidewalk, 28 Liberty can look like a simple modern slab.

But the most important move is under your feet: a circular opening cut through a corporate plaza, turning a basement into one of New York's most unexpected calm spaces.