The High Line: elevated railroad in Chelsea

[Gulcrapek]

meesa, wouldn't the structural engineer be Robert Silman Associates?

[meesalikeu]

i don't think a single person who has went up there hasn't taken a photo or three. i would defy anyone not to, the views are incredible -- it's the lays potato chips of city parks.

***

btw there will be no shenanigans up there at least for awhile. its crawling with cameras, call boxes, volunteer hosts, cops and park workers, not to mention crowds. maybe the cops are all just up getting a handle on it for now and will soon disappear? we'll see. still, if trouble starts happening they'll just close up the park earlier every day.

***

folks, hint, hint we're waiting on some night shots.....

[lofter1]

One name left off the "they did it" list : James Corner Field Operations was equally responsible for the design in collaboration with DS+R, and also did project management, collaboration & construction administration.

[meesalikeu]

meesa, wouldn't the structural engineer be Robert Silman Associates?

correct. it's silman not silverman.

sorry if that's you

[meesalikeu]

One name left off the "they did it" list : James Corner Field Operations was equally responsible for the design in collaboration with DS+R, and also did project management, collaboration & construction administration.

yes. it's listed like this:

design lead/landscape architecture/urban design: james corner field operations

i'll add it.

[scumonkey]

folks, hint, hint we're waiting on some night shots.....

Curbed had posted many night shots today...but they have mysteriously disappeared?

[meesalikeu]

oh i'm sure high line park nightshots are out there somewhere....just not here. yet.

[lofter1]

Hacked by a Related fan?

Friends of the High Line need more friends Tomorrow Night to help save the northern stretch of tracks that run above 30th Street -- which could be jeopardized by the Related plan for Hudson Yards:

Dear Friends,

It's been truly amazing these past 2 days to watch people visit the High Line for the first time -- but we need your help again, tomorrow night, to make sure the entire High Line at the rail yards is preserved.

Tomorrow night’s Community Board 4 public forum on the Western Rail Yards will be an important opportunity to show the City, MTA, and the Related Companies how much support there is for the High Line's preservation.

Read background on the hearing.

If you have a red "Save the High Line at the Rail Yards" T-Shirt, please wear it. We have a few more for those who come early.

RSVP to >> railyards@thehighline.org

And let us know if you would like to speak in favor of the High Line's preservation.

Wednesday, June 10
6:30 - 8:30 PM
Sign-in begins at 6:00
Fulton Center Auditorium
119 Ninth Avenue, between 17th and 18th Streets

We hope to see you there!

Best,

Josh and Robert

[lofter1]

On High, a Fresh Outlook

New York Times
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
June 10, 2009

ARCHITECTURE REVIEW

... one of the most thoughtful, sensitively designed public spaces built in New York in years ...

Slide Show: A Public Space, Elevated

Slide Show: Walking the Line

I keep picturing Carrie Bradshaw on the High Line, and it terrifies me.

Ever since it was unveiled in 2005, the design for this park, conceived for a strip of elevated rail tracks abandoned nearly 30 years ago, has been the favorite cause of New York’s rich and powerful. Celebrities attended fund-raisers on its deck. City officials endorsed it. Developers salivated over it, knowing it would raise land values.

I worried that it would one day be overrun with tourists and film crews. I imagined turning on the television to see Carrie stumbling down its promenade with a broken heel, weeping over Mr. Big. How, I wondered, could it possibly retain the tranquillity that made walking along its rusting, decrepit deck such a haunting experience? So I was overjoyed this weekend when I climbed the stairs at Gansevoort Street, entered the new city park and felt an immediate sense of calm. Designed by James Corner Field Operations with Diller Scofidio & Renfro, the first phase of the High Line, which opened on Tuesday, is a series of low scruffy gardens, punctuated by a fountain and a few quiet lounge areas, that unfold in a lyrical narrative and seem to float above the noise and congestion below. It is one of the most thoughtful, sensitively designed public spaces built in New York in years.

But 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.

A subtle play between contemporary and historical design, industrial decay and natural beauty sets the tone. The surface of the deck, for example, is made of concrete planks meant to echo the linearity of the old tracks. The path slips left and right as it advances, so that at some points you are right up against the edge of the railing and at others you are enveloped in the gardens.

And those gardens have a wild, ragged look that echoes the character of the old abandoned track bed when it was covered with weeds, just a few years ago. Wildflowers and prairie grasses mix with Amelanchier bushes, their branches speckled with red berries. Mr. Corner designed planters to hold the taller trees, and the Gansevoort entry is marked by a cluster of birches. On Saturday the gardens were swarming with bees, butterflies and birds. I half expected to see Bambi.

Occasionally, you catch a glimpse of a fragment of track lying in the grass, a carefully placed reminder of the High Line’s former life.

What saves all this from becoming a saccharine exercise in nostalgia is the sophistication with which these elements are fused together. The benches, for example, have a sleek contemporary feel; they are made of simple wood slats that lock into the deck’s concrete planks. The lighting, too, is uncommonly subtle. Most of it is embedded in the bottom of the handrails to keep the focus on the plantings and keep glare to a minimum.

As you continue north, the narrative keeps shifting. The park tunnels through an old brick commercial building just above 13th Street; dimly lit, the cavernous space offers an escape from the heat of a sunny day or from a downpour. Farther up, a spur breaks off and dead-ends into another building, creating a more private pocket overgrown with grasses and shrubs. The most original feature is a small amphitheater that angles down from the center of the deck near 17th Street. Sitting on rows of wood benches, visitors can look through an enormous window up the length of 10th Avenue, the cars and taxis roaring out from directly beneath their feet.

But as mesmerizing as the design is, it is the height of the High Line that makes it so magical, and that has such a profound effect on how you view the city. Lifted just three stories above the ground, you are suddenly able to perceive, with remarkable clarity, aspects of the city’s character you would never glean from an office window. At some points, billboards and parking structures dominate the foreground. At others, you are directly below the cornice line, so that you seem to be floating among the rooftops.

Longer views open up down narrow side streets to the Hudson, or east across the city.

At the same time, you are still close enough to make eye contact with people on the sidewalks, so that you never lose your connection to the street life. The High Line is the only place in New York where you can have this experience — one that is as singular in its way as standing on the observation deck of the Empire State Building.

None of this would matter if the architects had not struggled so hard to regulate access. It often seemed that almost every developer working in the meatpacking district, at one point or another, was begging to have an apartment building or hotel connect directly to the gardens. Yet remarkably, there are only four access points between Gansevoort and 20th Streets. This adds considerably to the park’s low-key mood, and reinforces the notion that it is a place for a quiet stroll, an escape from the trendy neighborhoods below.

We still need to see what will happen when the High Line gets on the major tourist itineraries. The second phase, extending it up to 30th Street, is set to start construction in a few weeks, which will raise new design questions. And developers are still fighting to build bridges to the gardens from their buildings.

But the care and patience with which this project was developed, both on the part of the architects and the High Line’s founders, Joshua David and Robert Hammond, is a rarity anywhere. They have given New Yorkers an invaluable and transformative gift.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

[lofter1]

FYI: This activity (as printed inthe NY Post) is verboten (and if Horticulturalist Piet Oudolf sees you doing it he'll let you know it in no uncertain terms, as he did to a news phtotgrapher during the Mayor's ribbon cutting on Monday):



The reason is that all of the gravel covered areas along the tracks are part of the very delicate planting medium which is shallow and easily compressible -- any footfalls on that graveled area will damage the roots of the plants. Imagine 5 or 10 or 50 feet pounding down on the roots days on end. Before long lthere will be dead patches everywhere.

So please do not walk on the gravel or play on the tracks in planted areas

[stache]

Do not expect delicate plant structures to survive in NYC. Please choose hardy specimens.

[lofter1]

The specimens are very hardy. Check out what's been done by Oudolf at Battery Park, where the site is buffeted by winds and salt water. But at the HL the area below the gravel isn't very deep. Not much will survive the stress of compacted roots.

The only other viable option would probably have been a swath of ground cover, ala a low-lying green roof.

[NYatKNIGHT]

You mean tell your children to get out of the plantings? Now you've gone too far. They're children - today you're apparently not allowed to tell them they can't do something. (another one of my pet peeves)

[scumonkey]

Night shots from curbed (they found their way back online)!
Photos by: Will Femia

[BrooklynRider]

The plantings are reminiscent of the Hudson River Park up above 25th Street. A butterfly's delight.