Spanning more than 1,200 acres, nearly one and a half times the size of Prospect Park, Liberty State Park is a critical public asset on New Jersey’s waterfront, welcoming millions of visitors each year. But as a low-lying site built on fill, it faces severe risks from sea level rise, storm surge, and future climate events. Its aging infrastructure, fragmented layout, and lack of shade diminish the visitor’s experience and strain its capacity to serve a growing regional population.

WXY led the design of the park’s built infrastructure, creating an architectural framework that addresses immediate deficiencies while establishing a foundation for long-term adaptability. The design introduces essential amenities, including restrooms, concessions, and bus shelters, engineered for durability, ease of maintenance, and equitable access.

In the northern zone, the plan establishes a flexible framework for movement, gathering, and moments of pause across a dispersed landscape, prioritizing comfort, legibility, and adaptability over fixed structures. At the heart of the north phase, WXY developed a strategy for the phased rehabilitation of the 300,000-square-foot Communipaw Train Shed. Listed on both the state and national historic registers, the shed is envisioned as a civic anchor with potential for interactive cultural programming, including restored rolling stock. Exploration of reintroducing a historic locomotive is underway. In collaboration with WRT and preservation architect PACA, WXY integrated environmental performance and resilience strategies into the preservation approach, ensuring the historic structure can meet contemporary needs without compromising its character.

In the south phase of the site, every structure reflects a commitment to resilience and responding to long-term uses of the park. Buildings are elevated above projected flood levels and designed to withstand future floods and wave forces. Modular components and low-embodied energy materials are proposed to enable future disassembly and reuse. Across the site, WXY’s interventions reflect the broader design philosophy of public architecture responding to climate realities while enhancing comfort, legibility, and inclusion.

The design repositions Liberty State Park as a contemporary civic landscape that protects the community’s ecological edge and supports everyday use. By transforming passive space into programmable nodes, WXY’s work knits the park’s vast acreage into a connected, legible experience. From shaded gathering areas to robust rest areas and adaptive reuse of historic infrastructure, the design introduces a public architecture rooted in sustainability, equitable access, and cultural continuity.