[3][8] Scholar Laurie Wilson called Nevelson the "first American environmental artist" and suggested that she was the first sculptor to work on the physical scale of Abstract Expressionist painters, some of whom, including Mark Rothko, she knew personally.

[10]: 112  In the following years, the Mayor's Office of Development published a booklet titled To Preserve a Heritage, which identified several public spaces in New York that could be adopted by and benefit from the support of private corporations.

[10]: 112  By that time, Nevelson had also completed another sculptural environment installation at St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Midtown Manhattan, which became known as the Chapel of the Good Shepherd and opened to the public in 1977.

Nevelson inspected the site from the upper floors of an office building adjacent to the space and decided she would place "seven black welded steel sculptures on columns, ranging from 20 to 40 feet high, so that they would 'appear to float like flags' above the plaza".

[13]: 126–128  As a Jewish immigrant, Nevelson was not "securely considered white" in mid-twentieth century America, Bryan-Wilson argues, and the artist's insistence on the "greatness" of blackness "articulates a pointed rejoinder to those who see it as degenerate or lesser", specifically within the context of systemic oppression of African-Americans in the United States.

[13]: 126 The artist considered the large scale of the surrounding skyscrapers, likened by art historian Laurie Wilson to "high mountains towering over a tiny valley", and intended to create what she called a "people's park (...) which would serve the neighborhood as an oasis from the city's hurly-burly".

[14] On 14 April 1977, the site, then known as Legion Memorial Square, was initially dedicated by Mayor Abraham Beame who "hailed Nevelson's sculpture as an antidote to a spate of recent violence in the city".

[2]: 90  According to scholar Richard Lacayo, the largest one of the seven sculptures installed in the plaza, standing 70 feet tall, "unfurls majestically against the heavy stone of the Florentine-style Federal Reserve Bank across the street".

[16]: 8  In December 1978, Nevelson dedicated another public sculpture in the Lower Manhattan titled Sky Gate, New York, which was installed in the mezzanine lobby of 1 World Trade Center on the opposite site of the Financial District.

In the aftermath of September 11 attacks in 2001, a security booth of the Federal Reserve Police was erected on the plaza to screen incoming trucks, marking the first alteration of Nevelson's original design.