The author and his son, Zachary
Have you ever dreamed you could fly? I have. My dreams of flight always have me swooping over the streets of New York, high above the traffic but close enough to the people to appreciate the millions of stories unfolding below me. It's a feeling of freedom and exhilaration, and while it's just a dream for now, I just discovered the next best thing: the High Line.
An Urban Icon Reborn
The High Line is New York's newest city park, and it's a spectacular example of how a disused industrial relic can be transformed into a new urban utopia. It's essentially a floating garden and promenade perched atop a 2.33 kilometer section of an elevated freight railroad line that snakes through the west side of Manhattan from Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District to 34th Street in Midtown. The park's industrial history dates back to 1934, when the elevated trestle was built to facilitate the flow of freight into the city from Boston, Chicago, and other parts of the country. After nearly fifty years of service, it was abandoned in 1980 and remained vacant for the next two decades, save for the odd vagrant and urban explorer.
In the late 1990's, city officials were considering the enormous task of dismantling the High Line when a couple of visionaries came up with a better idea. Inspired by the many beautiful wildflowers, grasses, and trees that sprouted on the tracks, Robert Hammond and Joshua David started a campaign to turn it into one of the world's most unusual city parks. An unlikely alliance of activists and politicians pulled together to make it happen, and today we've got one of the most interesting new urban parks anywhere in the world.
The first section of the High Line - from Gansevoort to 20th Streets - opened a few weeks ago, and New York has been crazy for it ever since. I visited The High Line for the first time this morning and can tell you it's simply spectacular. Entering via elevator on 16th street, I strolled out to the promenade and was immediately impressed by its seamless integration of form and function. While modern walkways have been installed, patches of the original wildflowers remain along the edges, fed by runoff from the water fountains. Stylish benches and even a row of chaise longues - befitting the fashionable neighborhood - provide a place to relax and take in the beauty of the park, from the colorful plants to the public art to the parade of New York society walking by. True to its name, the High Line is actually quite high up in the air. The views from ten meters above the street are breathtaking, like you're flying above the city, impervious to the chaos below. It's a rare feeling of lightness in a city with plenty of weight to go around.
The Floating Park's Many Faces
The High Line's charms are evident at every turn. In one section near 17th street, the long, dark wooden benches of a sunken amphitheater face picture windows that frame a view of traffic heading up 10th Avenue. Further north, visitors can stare eye-to-eye with iconic billboards featuring a young Shaquille O'Neal, or a scantily clad model advertising Armani Exchange. Art aficionados have several works to study, including a fascinating piece by Spencer Finch called The River That Flows Both Ways. Occupying several large panels along a wall in a shaded tunnel, the artist selected individual pixels from a variety of photographs of the Hudson River, isolated the color from each, blew them up to a massive size, and assembled them into a reordered whole. The result is a kaleidoscope of color reflecting the turbulence of the river and of New York itself.
From an engineering standpoint, the High Line is a masterpiece of American industrial strength in the early 20th century. Designed to support four fully loaded freight trains three stories above the street, it can certainly support a few thousand New Yorkers strolling on a pretty day. I was personally quite taken with the remnants of the railroad tracks that remain in certain areas, overgrown with flowers, trees, and grasses. From close up, they evoke an image of distant plains and the hardscrabble frontiersmen who scratched out a living in the Old West.
New Perspectives and Inspired Designs
Big afro and the Standard Hotel
The biggest winners are the architecture fans. Not only does the High Line afford spectacular angles on some of the amazing buildings in Chelsea, it provided the inspiration for one of the city's most exciting new hotels as well. The new Standard Hotel straddles the park at 13th Street, and its wavy facade of bluish glass reminds me of the retro-futuristic buildings of the fifties and sixties, an era when jet travel was new and Americans were convinced we'd be living in outer space before long. Built by hotel developer Andre Balazs, the 337-room hotel is at once an extension of the High Line and its architectural counterpart.
I could have spent hours walking up and down the High Line, but eventually it was time to descend back to the real world on street level. After I left, the one idea that I couldn't shake was just how well the park realized - and exceeded - the fantastical architectural renderings I'd seen in the newspaper years ago. It's as if the designer's vision simply leaped off the page and manifested into a fully formed park, perched atop a railroad line that is once again a vital part of New York City.