The building opened in 1987 as part of the World Financial Center and was designed by Haines Lundberg Waehler and Cesar Pelli & Associates.

The building is home to Dotdash Meredith, BNY Mellon, Hudson's Bay Company, Commerzbank, Fiserv, Oppenheimer Funds, Inc., State Street Corporation, McElroy, Deutsch, Virtusa, Mulvaney & Carpenter, LLP, Thacher Proffitt & Wood, LLP, and several divisions of Orange Group, among other companies.

[2] It is an example of postmodern architecture, as designed by Cesar Pelli & Associates, and contains over 2,491,000 square feet (231,400 m2) of rentable office area.

It connects to the rest of the World Financial Center complex through a courtyard leading to the Winter Garden, a dramatic glass-and-steel public space with a 120-foot vaulted ceiling under which there is an assortment of trees and plants, including sixteen 12-meter palm trees from the Mojave Desert.

[4] 225 Liberty Street and its neighbors had been severely damaged by the falling debris when the World Trade Center towers collapsed due to the September 11 attacks.