After the Fed moved to its second building in 1973, the new owner, a partnership of New York developers, Peter V. Tishman and Jay Marc Schwamm, had the lower portion covered with something that was a better match to the skyscraper "hat" on top.

The 3-foot-thick (0.91 m), windowless, lower floors were stripped of the granite and replaced with a "bird cage" limestone facade (designed by Minneapolis architect Robert Cerny) and a totally artificially sustained natural 3,000-square-foot (280 m2) garden of ficus trees and pools of water (designed by San Francisco landscape architectural firm of Lawrence Halprin).

At the time it was the largest totally artificially sustained garden within an office building in the United States.

[2] It had been modeled after the Ford Foundation Building in New York City, which has a larger garden, but also one that relies to some extent on outside natural light.

[3] Opportunity Advisors of Eden Prairie, Minnesota had purchased the building in May 2012 for somewhere around $5-$6 million, about one-fourth of its 1998 selling price.