Aim High: The High Line Park Reaches a New Goal

Millions of visitors have now gone high in New York.
On the High Line, that is: New York’s High Line Park, which opened last June, welcomed its two millionth visitor yesterday. A 12-year-old boy from North Carolina holds the honor. He and his sister, 9, participated in tree-planting ceremony to celebrate the event.
The park has proven far more popular than originally anticipated, with many originally scoffing at its existence. The High Line runs on Manhattan’s west side from Gansevoort Street in the meatpacking district to 20th Street, for about a half mile. It currently includes walkways, plantings, seating, and lighting. (Caveat animal lovers: No dogs allowed.) By next spring, the park will see an expansion up to 30th Street. The new part of the park will feature an elevated walkway running through an area of trees; the park will be about a mile and a half long. Access from street level will be every two or three blocks.
Starting today, the park will be open from 7 am to 10 pm into the fall.
The High Line was originally built in the 1930s as a way of getting freight trains off Manhattan’s streets. (Fact: So many accidents occurred with freight trains and street-level traffic that 10th Avenue was known as Death Avenue.) Trains stopped running there in the early 1980s; the last one carried frozen turkeys.
In 1999, a group called Friends of the High Line was formed to prevent the structure from being demolished. An open competition was held to solicit ideas for the area’s renovation, with 720 teams from 36 countries entering. The ultimate winner, James Corner Field Operations, a landscape architecture firm, was among those chosen for the area’s redesign.
Visit thehighline.org for more information, or call 212 500-6035.

Former High Line Railway Gets Second Life As Public Park

The new High Line Park, an urban park in the sky, opened on June 9 to the public in New York City. It is constructed on top of the skeleton of a former rail system on building rooftops 30 feet above the ground. High Line Park is located on Manhattan’s West Side, running from Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District to West 20th Street in Chelsea, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues.
The rooftop park was renovated and designed by James Corner Field Operations along with architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro. It has wooden lawns chairs, an LED lighting system, and landscape of green plants and grass among concrete. The park is accessible from Gansevoort Street, 14th Street, 16th Street, 18th Street, and 20th Street, and is open daily from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.
The original High Line, a 1.45-mile long steel railway, was built in the 1930s in an effort to remove freight trains from street traffic after too many accidents occurred between the two. No trains have run on the High Line since 1980. Nature took over after trains stopped running and became overgrown and untouched.
Friends of the High Line was founded in 1999, a non-profit community-led group advocating for the High Line’s preservation and reuse as a public park. The group gained city support in 2002 with a City Council resolution supporting the High Line’s reuse. Groundbreaking and construction started in April 2006.
A second section from 20th Street to 30th Street is projected to be ready in 2010, and a third and final section will come after that.