The High Line, the long awaited, celebrity endorsed old rail line that was recast as parkspace on Manhattan’s west side, is now open to the public. The brainchild of a pair of obsessive fans of trains and New York history–writer Joshua David and painter Robert Hammond–the High Line is a landscaped old rail trail that runs from Gansevoort Street to West 20th; the next phase will extend it to West 30th. Pedestrians can enter at Gansevoort and West 16th Street.
The NY Times calls it “something of a New York fairy tale.”
“It started with a couple of guys who met at a community board meeting in 1999 — Joshua David, a writer, and Robert Hammond, a painter — and discovered they shared a fervent interest in saving the abandoned railroad trestle, which had been out of commission since 1980 and was slated for demolition during the Giuliani administration. That began a decade-long endeavor that involved rescuing the structure and enlisting the Bloomberg administration in its preservation and renovation.
The Times also offers up an architectural review of the High Line. Nicholas Ouroussoff writes:
What’s really unexpected about the park is the degree to which it alters your perspective on the city. Guiding you through a secret landscape of derelict buildings, narrow urban canyons and river views, it allows you to make entirely new visual connections between different parts of Manhattan while maintaining a remarkably intimate relationship with the surrounding streets.
The park, which currently extends as far north as West 20th Street, is conceived as a series of interwoven events, like chapters of a book. Approached from the south along Washington Street in the meatpacking district, its 30-foot-high steel deck, supported on big steel columns and sliced off brutally at one end, makes for a striking contrast with the green, leafy landscape atop it. A street-level entry plaza, paved in concrete, is tucked underneath, and a broad metal staircase, with sleek brushed stainless-steel handrails, leads up to the structure’s underbelly. Rusted Corten steel plates line the opening in the deck’s floor, emphasizing the violence of the cut.
In other words, Nicholas likes it.