The High Line : The Solutions in Central City Park

The High Line is a 1-mile (1.6 km) New York City linear park built on a 1.45-mile (2.33 km) section of the elevated former New York Central Railroad spur called the West Side Line, which runs along the lower west side of Manhattan; it has been redesigned and planted as an aerial greenway. A similar project in Paris, the 3-mile (4.8-kilometre) Promenade plantée, completed in 1993, was the inspiration for this project. The High Line currently runs from Gansevoort Street, three blocks below West 14th Street, in the Meatpacking District, to 30th Street, through the neighborhood of Chelsea to the West Side Yard, near the Javits Convention Center. Formerly the viaduct of the High Line went as far south as Spring Street just north of Canal Street, but the lower section was demolished in 1960

History of Railroad Line

In 1847, the City of New York authorized street-level railroad tracks down Manhattan’s West Side. For safety, the railroads hired men — the "West Side Cowboys" — to ride horses and wave flags in front of the trains. Yet so many accidents occurred between freight trains and other traffic that 10th Avenue became known as "Death Avenue".

After years of public debate about the hazard, in 1929 the city and the state of New York and the New York Central Railroad agreed on the West Side Improvement Project, which included the High Line. The 13-mile (21 km) project eliminated 105 street-level railroad crossings and added 32 acres (13 ha) to Riverside Park. It cost over $150 million, about $2 billion in 2009 dollars.

The High Line, then a portion of the West Side Line opened to trains in 1934. It originally ran from 34th Street to St. John's Park Terminal, at Spring Street. It was designed to go through the center of blocks, rather than over the avenue, to avoid the drawbacks of elevated trains. It connected directly to factories and warehouses, allowing trains to roll right inside buildings. Milk, meat, produce, and raw and manufactured goods could be transported and unloaded without disturbing traffic on the streets. This also reduced pilferage for the Bell Laboratories Building, now the Westbeth Artists Community, and the Nabisco plant, now Chelsea Market, which were served from protected sidings within the structures.

The train also passed underneath the Western Electric complex at Washington Street. This section has survived until today and is not connected with the rest of the developed park.

The growth of interstate trucking in the 1950s led to a drop in rail traffic throughout the nation. In the 1960s, the southernmost section of the line was demolished. This section started at Gansevoort Street and ran down Washington Street as far as Spring Street just north of Canal Street, representing almost half of the line. The last train on the remaining part of the line was operated by Conrail in 1980 with three carloads of frozen turkeys.

In the mid-1980s, a group of property owners with land under the line lobbied for the demolition of the entire structure. Peter Obletz, a Chelsea resident, activist, and railroad enthusiast, challenged the demolition efforts in court and tried to re-establish rail service on the line. During the late 1980s, the north end of the High Line was disconnected from the rest of the national railroad system with the construction of the Empire Connection to Penn Station, which opened in 1991. In the 1990s, as the line lay unused and in disrepair (despite the fact that the riveted steel elevated structure was structurally sound) it became known to a few urban explorers and local residents for the tough, drought-tolerant wild grasses, shrubs, and rugged trees such as sumac that had sprung up in the gravel along the abandoned railway. It was slated for demolition under the administration of then-mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Repurposing

In 1999, the non-profit Friends of the High Line was formed by Joshua David and Robert Hammond, residents of the neighborhood the High Line ran through. They advocated for the Line's preservation and reuse as public open space, an elevated park or greenway, similar to the Promenade Plantée in Paris. Broadened community support of public redevelopment for the High Line for pedestrian use grew, and in 2004, the New York City government committed $50 million to establish the proposed park. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speakers Gifford Miller and Christine C. Quinn were important supporters.

On June 13, 2005, the U.S. Federal Surface Transportation Board issued a certificate of interim trail use, allowing the City to remove most of the line from the national railway system. On April 10, 2006, Mayor Bloomberg presided over a ceremony that marked the beginning of construction. The park was designed by the James Corner's New York-based landscape architecture firm Field Operations and architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, with planting design from Piet Oudolf of the Netherlands, lighting design from L'Observatoire International, and engineering design by Buro Happold. Major backers have included Philip Falcone and Diane von Fürstenberg, her husband Barry Diller, and her children Alexander von Fürstenberg and Tatiana von Fürstenberg. Hotel developer Andre Balazs, owner of the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, built the 337-room Standard Hotel straddling the High Line at West 13th Street.

The southernmost section, from Gansevoort Street to 20th Street, opened as a city park on June 8, 2009. This southern section includes five stairways and elevators at 14th Street and 16th Street.

On June 7, 2011 a ribbon was cut to open the second High Line section from 20th Street to 30th Street, with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, and Congressman Jerrold Nadler in attendance.

The northernmost section, from 30th to 34th Streets, is owned by CSX Transportation, which in 2011 agreed in principle to donate the section to the city, while the Related Companies, which own the development rights to the West Side Rail Yards, agreed not to tear down the spur that crosses 10th Avenue.

Description

The park extends from Gansevoort Street north to 30th Street where the elevated tracks turn west around the Hudson Yards development project to the Javits Convention Center on 34th Street. Open daily from 7 am to 10 pm, the park can be reached through nine entrances, four of which are accessible to people with disabilities.

The park's attractions include naturalized plantings that are inspired by the self-seeded landscape that grew on the disused tracks and new, often unexpected views of the city and the Hudson River. Pebble-dash concrete walkways unify the trail, which swells and constricts, swinging from side to side, and divides into concrete tines that meld the hardscape with the planting embedded in railroad gravel mulch. Stretches of track and ties recall the High Line's former use. Portions of track are adaptively re-used for rolling lounges positioned for river views. Most of the planting, which includes 210 species, is of rugged meadow plants, including clump-forming grasses, liatris and coneflowers, with scattered stands of sumac and smokebush, but not limited to American natives. At the Gansevoort end, a grove of mixed species of birch already provides some dappled shade by late afternoon. Ipê timber for the built-in benches has come from a managed forest certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, to ensure sustainable use and the conservation of biological diversity, water resources and fragile ecosystems.

The High Line has cultural attractions as well as its integrated architecture and plant life. As part of a long-term plan for the park to host temporary installations and performances of various kinds, Creative Time, Friends of the High Line, and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation commissioned The River That Flows Both Ways by Spencer Finch as the inaugural art installation. The work is integrated into the window bays of the former Nabisco Factory loading dock, as a series of 700 purple and grey colored glass panes. Each color is exactly calibrated to match the center pixel of 700 digital pictures, one taken every minute, of the Hudson River, therefore presenting an extended portrait of the river that gives the work its name. Creative Time worked with the artist to realize the site-specific concept, which emerged when he saw the rusted, disused mullions of the old factory, which metal and glass specialists Jaroff Design helped to prepare and reinstall. The summer of 2010 featured a sound installation by Stephen Vitiello, composed from bells heard through New York. Lauren Ross, formerly director of the alternative art space White Columns, is serving as the first curator for the High Line.

Impact

The recycling of the railway into an urban park has spurred real estate development in the neighborhoods that lie along the line. Mayor Bloomberg noted that the High Line project has helped usher in something of a renaissance in the neighborhood: by 2009, more than 30 projects were planned or under construction nearby. On the other hand, the real estate boom has its victims as well: many well-established businesses in West Chelsea have closed due to loss of neighborhood customer base or rent increases.

Crime has been extraordinarily low in the park. Shortly after the second section opened, The New York Times reported that there have been no reports of major crimes such as assaults or robberies since it opened. Parks Enforcement Patrols had written summonses for various infractions of park rules, such as walking dogs or bicycles on the walkway, but at a rate lower than Central Park. Park advocates attributed that to the high visibility of the High Line from the surrounding buildings, a design feature inspired by the writings of urbanist Jane Jacobs. "Empty parks are dangerous", David told the newspaper. "Busy parks are much less so. You’re virtually never alone on the High Line."

Residents who have bought apartments next to the High Line have adapted to its presence in varying ways. For the most part though, their responses are positive.

A New Yorker columnist was of the opinion, when reviewing the diner renamed for the High Line, that "the new Chelsea that is emerging on weekends as visitors flood the elevated park ... [is] touristy, overpriced, and shiny."

The success of the High Line in New York City has encouraged the leaders of other cities, such as Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, who see it as "a symbol and catalyst" for gentrifying neighborhoods. Several cities also have plans to renovate some railroad infrastructure into park land, including Philadelphia and St. Louis. In Chicago, where the Bloomingdale Trail, a 2.7 miles (4.3 km)-long linear park on former railroad infrastructure, will run through several neighborhoods. It costs substantially less to redevelop an abandoned urban rail line into a linear park than to demolish it. James Corner, one of its designers, said, "The High Line is not easily replicable in other cities," observing that building a "cool park" requires a "framework" of neighborhoods around it in order to succeed.

Due to the popularity of the High Line, there have been several proposals for museums along the High Line. The Dia Art Foundation considered but rejected a proposal to build a museum at the Gansevoort Street terminus. On that site, the Whitney Museum is currently constructing a new home for its collection of American art. The building was designed by Renzo Piano and will open in 2015.

In Queens, the Queensway, a proposed High Line-like park, is being considered for reactivation along the right-of-way of the former LIRR Rockaway Beach Branch.

In popular culture

• 1979: The opening sequence of the film Manhattan includes a shot of the High Line, as director and star Woody Allen speaks the first line: "Chapter One. He adored New York City."
• 1984: Director Zbigniew Rybczyński shoots the video for Art Of Noise's recording Close (to the Edit) on the High Line.
• 1988: The protagonist and his boyfriend trespass onto the then-overgrown High Line in Fun Down There.
• 2001: In Walking the High Line photographer Joel Sternfeld documented the dilapidated conditions and the natural flora of the High Line between 2000 and 2001. The book also contains essays by Adam Gopnik and John R. Stilgoe.[33]
• 2007: The High Line is discussed in Alan Weisman's The World Without Us as an example of the reappearance of the wild in an abandoned area.
• 2007: Some chase scenes in the film I Am Legend were filmed under the High Line and in the Meatpacking District.
• 2009: The 2009 hip-hop song "The High Line" by Kinetics & One Love is a pro-green song which uses the High Line railway, before its conversion into a park, as an example of nature's reclamation of man-made structures.[34]
• 2011: The park appears in a scene in the second season of Louie as the site of one of the title character's dates.
• 2011: The High Line is featured in the song "The Marching Line" by pop singer Vanessa Carlton on her fourth studio album Rabbits on the Run.
• 2012: A scene in the first season of Girls, a series on HBO, features the High Line.
• 2012: In the Simpsons episode "Moonshine River", the Simpsons go to New York City, where Bart went on an outing on the High Line with his former girlfriend.
• 2012: The movie What Maisie Knew features a scene where Maisie and Lincoln play at the High Line.

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