The High Line: elevated railroad in Chelsea

[Merry]

Major Milestone for the High Line's Preservation at the Rail Yards



We just received word of an exciting development at the West Side Rail Yards. The Department of City Planning has announced that the City will initiate the process to acquire the High Line above 30th Street.

The City's decision to acquire the High Line is a major step towards achieving our ultimate goals: full preservation of the historic structure north of 30th Street, including the 10th Avenue Spur, and completion of the High Line project all the way to 34th Street.

To understand the importance of this advance, it's helpful to remember that the City's 2005 acquisition of the High Line south of 30th Street was a crucial step in the preservation of that section. Similarly, we expect the City's acquisition of the rail yards section to lead ultimately to park construction on the northern end of the High Line.

Read the full press release

Thank you for all your work in helping us get this far. This would have never happened without the tireless efforts of our High Line supporters. When the current planning process for the rail yards began over three years ago, many believed that the chances of preserving the High Line were slim to none. You came out to countless public review sessions, developer presentations, and City Council hearings, spoke out, and wrote letters of support. Though there is still much work to be done before the High Line's future is secure at the rail yards, this announcement is a true victory for the High Line.

Special thanks also go to the Department of City Planning, especially Chair Amanda Burden, who has long recognized the value of the High Line to the rail yards site, to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whose leadership reversed the City policy to demolish the entire High Line in 2002, to the City Council under the leadership of Speaker Christine Quinn, who has been at the forefront of this advocacy campaign, to United States Representative Jerrold Nadler, who has worked towards the High Line's preservation at the rail yards for decades, to Borough President Scott Stringer, State Senator Tom Duane, Assemblymember Richard Gottfried, and all of our partners at Community Board 4 and Hudson Yards Community Advisory Committee. Without the support of our elected and government leaders, the High Line's preservation at the rail yards would be an impossible dream. Thanks also to the Related Companies, the site's developer, for their recognition of the High Line's value and their work to integrate it into their plans for the site.

The process that begins with this announcement, and ends in City acquisition of the High Line above 30th Street, will likely take several months. Along the way, there will be a number of opportunities for public comment, and we will be urging our supporters to once again show up to support the High Line. You will be hearing from us in the coming weeks about these next steps. We are confident that with your continued support, our hard work will result in the full preservation of this iconic part of New York City's industrial past.

http://www.thehighline.org/news/2009...the-rail-yards

[meesalikeu]

yeah i got that and was going to post it too.

its not over by any means good news at last that the city will be in control instead of private developers!

[Merry]

Removal of Graffiti Along High Line Vexes Some

By Sarah Maslin Nir


Seth Carnes Graffiti, left, has been cleaned up in many cases since the completion of the High Line, right.
Seth Carnes, an artist, has been documenting the process, and he is critical of it.

Up on the High Line, the city’s newest park, set on a formerly abandoned elevated railroad line, the site’s gritty history gets a passing reference: Slats underfoot conjure the railroad ties that once sat quietly rotting under wild weeds up here.

But a more obvious sign of the edifice’s derelict past — the graffiti once splashed across the building walls that hem in the track — has been almost completely erased. And what is left of that urban art, or urban blight, depending on whom one asks, is likely to be scrubbed away, a move that has divided some New Yorkers over the place grime has in the city’s landscape.

The city identified about 20 buildings along the entire High Line as candidates for graffiti removal and reached out to their owners back in October 2008, according to Evelyn Erskine, a spokeswoman for the mayor’s office. Under legislation passed in September intended to speed up cleanup, the city’s Graffiti Free NYC program, which identifies and removes graffiti, contacts people whose buildings have been defaced. If the owners do not object, the city will remove the paint free of charge, unless the building owners ask to do it themselves or tell the city they would like the scrawl to stay. When graffiti is on private property, as it is on the buildings abutting the High Line, the city cannot force a cleanup, Ms. Erskine says.

So far, 18 of the buildings have permitted the city to scrub them clean — nine of which have already had the work completed. The remaining buildings are mostly along the unfinished second half of the track, where park construction is still under way. The move has been lamented in the graffiti blogosphere and chronicled in places like iheart.org, the Web site of Seth Carnes, an artist whose 2008 white, red and black painting of the words “i heart” on a patch of brick wall above the line near 13th Street was covered over with what he writes is “a battleship gray layer of paint” this past spring.

“Certainly when I saw the drab gray paint over it, it was a tragic moment,” though not entirely unexpected, Mr. Carnes said. “Part of the act of the street art-form is what goes onto a wall is covered or changes. But I think a solid gray coat of paint over what used to be a nice textured brick wall with some good graffiti over it is not an improvement.”

Friends of the High Line, the organization behind the park’s creation and operation, declined to comment on the topic.

Still not yet “buffed,” as graffiti proponents term the cleaning procedure, are tags and designs alongside the unfinished stretch of the park. Some are by celebrities of the underground, like the elusive artist “Revs,” and “Sacer,” the label used by the indie artist Dash Snow, who died of a drug overdose last summer. Revs, who keeps his true identity secret, spent the ’90s plastering the city with “rollers,” giant block type versions of his nickname executed with house paint and roller brushes on long handles.

“Not everybody feels that it is art,” says Dorothea Basile, the director and founder of ARTime, an arts education organization, who has taught classes and leads walking tours on the High Line about contemporary and other art. For some people, the answer to whether it should stay hinges on whether the markings are art or an eyesore. “The idea of preserving something that people don’t feel that it’s art is very challenging,” Ms. Basile says.

Both Ms. Basile and Mr. Carnes point out that many of the Chelsea galleries beneath the High Line’s shadow, like Phillips de Pury & Company, often exhibit and sell the work of graffiti artists, sometimes for hefty sums.

“A lot of people simply don’t like graffiti — to them, it’s just litter, basically,” says Peter Sutherland, a photographer whose book of portraits of stars of the graffiti galaxy, “Autograf,” features a forward written by Revs. But “there’s people that consider graffiti like a lot of the great music that’s known to come out of New York; the best kind of bits of culture we’ve produced here in the past 25 years.”

To Mr. Sutherland, the art value of the rollers, “fill-ins” or “throw-ups,” as the variety of tags are called, is somewhat beside the point. “It’s like a visual cue as to the history of the High Line when it was closed down,” he says. “Other than, like, weeds overgrowing, those are the only kind of little tidbits that tell you what was going on there, till whenever it stopped functioning.”

“It speaks to the history of what this site was,” Ms. Basile says. “Part of what I think is so great about the High Line is I feel like there has been a real thoughtfulness in terms of acknowledging its artificialness, and at the same time wanting to take in its past history.”

Nonetheless, the clock is still ticking for the graffiti on the nine remaining facades. “Very similar to the debate about whether or not it’s art, is whether or not it should be preserved,” Mr. Sutherland says. “It’s part of what makes graffiti interesting, the controversial side of it.”

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/20...ne-vexes-some/

[Merry]

High Line Construction Chronicles: Mind the Gap

October 21, 2009, by Joey



The potential Phase III of the High Line got some good news yesterday, when word leaked that the city will soon make moves to acquire and, perhaps, preserve the northern portion of the elevated rail bed. But what's new with Phase II, the 10-block portion starting at 20th Street that's scheduled for a 2010 debut? Plenty! Check out these spy shots sent from high above Tenth Avenue and 23rd Street, where a hole has been cut out of the High Line to clear some space for a new staircase, of which future HL23 residents will apparently have a great view. Meanwhile, Chicago may get its own High Line-style train tracks makeover, called the Bloomingdale Trail. Followers.

High Line coverage [Curbed]

http://curbed.com/archives/2009/10/2...nd_the_gap.php

[scumonkey]

Costly 'trips' on High Line

By JAMES FANELLI and RICH CALDER
Last Updated: 5:18 AM, November 1, 2009
Posted: 2:45 AM, November 1, 2009
Money had better grow on trees in the High Line Park, because the city's newest greenway is also its latest liability.
Less than five months old, the elevated promenade has become a major stumbling block. Pedestrians are tripping over raised concrete slabs meant to resemble train rails, and one has even filed a $2 million claim against the city.
Paula Shapiro, 66, said she broke her left ankle during an evening stroll along the path on June 21, two weeks after it opened, according to court papers.
The Gramercy Park resident was 246 feet north of the park's Gansevoort Street entrance when she tripped near a median of trees and flowers surrounded by "raised, uneven, depressed decorative concrete," her claim states.

And while Shapiro is the first pedestrian-turned-plaintiff at the $172 million park, she is not the first to fall, her lawyer said.
"She was told there had been accidents before," Jeffrey Pomerantz told The Post.


Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/m...#ixzz0VkgFqZvh

[lofter1]

That concrete is not just "decorative." The raised edges / ends on the HL walkways were designed that way to make the paths ADA compliant & friendlier for disabled folks. Those edges let the blind know where the path drops down to the planting area, and they also create a stopper for wheelchairs so they don't go off the path. The bumps are there to say: "Don't walk here."

The one area that might raise some problem is around the "water feature" with the nearly invisible raised "rippled" concrete. But Ms. Shapiro fell down below the Standard Hotel -- maybe she was checking out the action up above and not watching where she was going ...

[Ninjahedge]

I hate this crap.

You should not be able to sue the city for tripping unless an official stuck their leg out at you while you were not looking.

Some of these cases need to be examined and determined if they are indeed because of a negligent sdesign/construction or frivolous.

Maybe a donation box needs to be made for collection of funds for the legal defense of the High Line.

[ZippyTheChimp]

The only design problem that I can think of is the wooden bench that is anchored on one side by a concrete form that flows up out of the slats. At certain angles, it becomes sort of camouflaged with the ground.

The rest seems to be look where you're going, but that no longer applies.

[NYatKNIGHT]

I wish there were a verdict: nobody should pay for your clumsiness. Next!

[ZippyTheChimp]

Judge



"No High Line for you. One year."

[Ninjahedge]

Park-Nazi!

[Merry]

Originally Posted by Merry

Marvelous tour, kz .

I'm wondering what will happen to the plants during winter?

Winter-Proofing the High Line

Posted on November 6, 2009 by Auzelle Epeneter

High Line gardener Kaspar Wittlinger watering the grasses just south of the Standard Hotel

Despite the mild weather so far this season, winter is on its way. Most of the above-ground vegetation on the High Line will lie dormant in the freezing weather, but in order to ensure that plants survive into the spring, measures must be taken to protect the roots still living beneath the surface.

After the first freeze, the water will be turned off on the High Line in order to protect the pipes. The soil, too, will harden and no longer absorb moisture. So while the delicate, dried stalks and leaves don’t require watering now, the gardeners continue to irrigate their roots to provide protection.

The gusts that blow off the Hudson River, just blocks from the High Line, will also pose a challenge to the plants this winter. “People don’t realize that wind is dry,” gardener Kaspar Wittlinger tells me, “It sucks moisture out of the soil.” He says woody plants in particular are susceptible to damage–the bark can crack open, similar to the way unprotected skin reacts to icy winds.

http://blog.thehighline.org/2009/11/...the-high-line/

[meesalikeu]

i took these this morning -- looking good up there this fall!
























last up is the newly opened 14th street elevator

[lofter1]

The High Line Blog has November Bloom info.

[Merry]

Excellent photos, meesa .

It's nice to have a record of what the HL will look like in the different seasons.

Must they pollute the scene with those ads?