Winter Garden Atrium (Brookfield Place)

The Winter Garden belongs to the World Financial Center, an office complex designed by César Pelli and built from 1983 to 1988 by Olympia & York in Battery Park City. Designed in 1985, the hall opened on 14 October 1988 at a cost of 60 million dollars. The sources name Pelli for the building and the firm Balmori Associates for the interior, palm grove and paving included; that firm dates its work to 1988. Until 2001 a footbridge about 120 m long linked it to the World Trade Center.

On 11 September 2001, debris from the collapsing towers destroyed many panes and the footbridge, and the glass and steel frame suffered heavy damage. The reconstruction cost 50 million dollars and used 2,000 panes of glass, 60,000 square feet of marble for floors and stairs, and sixteen new palms. The Winter Garden reopened in September 2002, on the 17th according to the English and German Wikipedia, while another Wikipedia article mentions a ceremony on 11 September; that year the project received the New York Landmarks Conservancy's Lucy G. Moses Preservation Project Award. With the footbridge gone, the east entrance became a wall of very clear glass, and a glazed entrance pavilion, an extension of the Winter Garden on the West Street side, opened in 2013.

The palms themselves were renewed in 2013, then in July 2024. The complex was renamed Brookfield Place in 2014 and is owned today by Brookfield.

The hall has ten storeys and rises to 120 feet (37 m), according to Wikipedia, under a barrel-vaulted glass roof that CultureNow describes as carried by strongly arching trusses. The AIA Guide, quoted by that site, gives it about 130 by 230 feet (≈ 40 x 70 m), roughly the size of Grand Central's concourse; Wikipedia also mentions about 45,000 square feet (4,200 m²) and the Balmori firm 18,000 square feet of landscaped area.

The hall is the main public thoroughfare of the complex and its link to the World Trade Center site. Visitors descend a large semicircular staircase from the upper level to the palm grove, planted in a rectangular grid in a floor of imported marble laid in diagonal patterns. The glass walls are lined with shops and restaurants, with exhibition galleries along the walls and movable seating around the edge. After 2001 the east entrance was redesigned as a wall-sized expanse of very clear glass panels on a minimal structure; a 110-foot-long balcony upstairs looks out over the memorial site.

The only documented botanical feature is the grove of sixteen Washingtonia robusta, which the press calls the Mexican fan palm. The Balmori firm explains the choice by a tree with a narrow trunk and lush foliage, tough enough to withstand the hall's dry air and wide temperature swings. Indoors the trunks do not strengthen as they do outdoors, so the trees are replaced about every ten years, when they approach 55 to 60 feet. Annual growth is six inches (15 cm) according to the venue's own site and The Broadsheet, one to two feet (30 to 60 cm) according to Tribeca Citizen and NY1.

In July 2024 sixteen new palms, about 35 feet tall according to NY1, were installed over some twelve nights of work. The landscaping firm had chosen them from 2,000 palms in Florida, a search lasting three years, and the wood of the old trees was shredded into mulch for plantings of local trees.

The Winter Garden is as much a place to cross as to visit: it is the public hall of Brookfield Place, reached through the Oculus underground passage or from the ferry, lined with shops, the Hudson Eats food hall and the Winter Garden Gallery. It hosts hundreds of events a year, concerts, exhibitions and seasonal installations such as Luminaries, a holiday light display. The big east glass wall looks out over the World Trade Center memorial site, and the venue's own site points to views of North Cove Marina. A stroll along the Battery Park City esplanades by the Hudson makes a natural extension.