High Line – New York City, New York
The High Line is a piece of transformative infrastructure linking several neighborhoods on the West Side of Manhattan. Starting at the 34th Street entrance we walk the High Line in reverse from the newest extension towards the original section.
This interim walkway has no formal plantings and the walking surface is roughly paved. The message sent is this is an area left incomplete and one to move through quickly.
An emerging skyline prepares to overtake Hudson Yards. Trains briefly exposed to light and air will surely be buried beneath millions of square feet of living, office, and shopping space. For now though these few slabs stand as sentinels enjoying unobstructed views of the Hudson and points beyond.
Facing back towards the direction from where we came here you can see the wildness that precedes the order that follows.
A brief glimpse is provided of the massive structure below. Beams are cleaned and treated encoraging people to physically interact with the structure.
These great open spaces leave the mind to reflect of what will come here next? Surely a filling station and warehouse structures do not represent the highest and best use.
Some of the more architecturally distinct spaces emerge in this spot. These are where the High Line intersects with newer modern and space age buildings, some of which look like they might have been listed directly from the Jetsons.
Zaha Hadid has made a unique contribution to the cityscape. More photos are taken of this work under construction seemingly than any other spot. There is a wonderful conversation between the shape and scale of this building and passersby. This is accentuated by the expanding and receding curves on each floor that draw the eye in.
This end building on the row, while more angular in comparison has an interesting planar facade and the structure allowing for these distortions to occur revealed, with steel beams criss-crossing the curtain wall of windows.
This seating area with glass panel dividers and railing, gives people a vantage point to watch street traffic below. While a subtle feature, the beam above frames the space makes it appear cinematic from the people looking out towards the street, or for people on the street looking at those watching them from the High Line. A little further down another seating area with tiers of seating is enclosed giving a space that lends itself for outdoor performances or moderately sized gatherings.
At this point the old and the new architecture are in their starkest contrast. Tall buildings are all around, while to the right the brick multi-story building with cornice is a reminder of an earlier time in New York City when most buildings were this height. This building preceded the formal construction of the High Line. Had the owner and builder known that one day people might be gazing into the upper floor windows from this elevated space, they might have disguised the inside of the building better.
The cornice level view gives an up close look of a building feature usually seen only from great distances.
These twin towers have a dignity to them, thanks to the setback on the uppermost floors. A close inspection reveals one of the two buildings to be wider with more bays than the other. Together, though, they make for a handsome if someone mismatched pair.
Another building here mirrors the nearby Starrett Leigh building that served as a freight terminal. The rounded corners, ribbon windows, and towering size all help to make this building stand out from others.
When we were visiting some sort of temporary art installation was underway. It somewhat resembled a cityscape, with images stacked on one another, much like some of the surrounding modern towers look. Giving people a place to sit has resulted in a rich tapestry of city life with people of many backgrounds, ages, and experiences all enjoying this common shared space.
Here roughly mirrored rectangular boxes mark a passage from one section to another.
A perfect collage of buildings of different sizes, scale, ages, and materials unfolds before us. Together they make for a perfect picture of contrasts.
Here a discarded fragment of infrastructure is repurposed as sculpture. Fitting for its setting and what it rests upon.
The ubiquitous museum store experiences a reinvention in one of the spaces covered by a building overhead. Here on rollers and set up and put away each day – it allows people to shop and support the ground they stand on. The membership rolling table, in particular, is an innovation worth other public places and museums to emulate.
Programming of regular events is one of the ways that the High Line incentivizes people to visit and to make sure that the space is active at less busy times.
A conscious effort is made to incorporate art in all its forms. Tucked beneath a building here is a screen for viewing film projections.
Near the southern end we are confronted by the contrast between old and new construction. New rises up and towers over as great monoliths. While old hugs close to the ground – something to look down upon rather than looked up towards.
What the High Line does better than anywhere else is giving people an opportunity to mix. Choke points along the path lead to collisions of the best possible kind. While walking different paths, it is important to look up and adjust to those around you. This may lead to meeting someone new or connecting with people you are visiting together with in new ways.
This deft touch of nature seemingly emerging from the concrete paving slabs. Nature extends like fingers into the public domain and impervious surfaces. This demonstrates resilience and how the wildness that characterized the High Line before its reinvention, cannot be entirely tamed.
And, yet, reminders of the even earlier railroad function remain. Tracks are covered over though also laying in wait should they ever be called back into service. Meanwhile, nature has other ideas, filling the spaces between and turning everything from steel to green. Freight rail fueled the population boom and rapid growth in manufacturing in New York City during the nineteenth century. New York Central Railroad built the elevated railroad between 1929 and 1934 to eliminate street-level train crossings from 34th Street and Spring Street. This improved efficiency and public safety. This allowed for efficient deliveries of meat, produce, and dairy products to warehouse up and down the West Side. Decline of manufacturing in Manhattan also led to a decrease in train traffic in the 1950s and 1960s, ending completely by 1980.
As one descends at the southern exit they are reminded of the massiveness of the structure. A construction feat that surely could not be repeated today.
Termination of the High Line where this incredible piece of infrastructure seemingly just stops. Of course it naturally leads to speculation about whether it continued how far it might have gone? Only fragments of elevated tracks can be found between here and points further south.
The story of the High Line and the tens of thousands of people who have been part of the transformation are recognized in these panels dedicated June 9, 2009. A 1999 study on reuse of the elevated railway by CSX led two residents, Joshua David and Robert Hammond, to create Friends of the High Line, an organization to advocate for adaptive reuse of the High Line.
