Reply With QuoteAwful easy to spend someone else's money isn't it
Why doesn't Moneybags Bloomberg just kick in the other 65 mil...it's chump change for him.
Awful easy to spend someone else's money isn't it
He's the mayor. If he's serious about that role, and his city....
What else is he going to spend his billions on, anyway? It'd be a nice legacy to be remembered by in perpetuity. And don't pollies just love good publicity?
Third Section of High Line Is On The Docket, On Google Maps
by Kelsey Keith
Good news from the High Line pipeline today: all the stakeholders have now pledged allegiance to the development of Section Three, the allée from West 30th to West 34th Street. Private rail company CSX Transportation (which still owns the High Line) has officially agreed to donate this last remaining section to the City of New York, and the city in turn struck an official deal with with the state and Related Companies to "preserve the entire historic structure of the High Line at the West Side Rail Yards, including the spur over 10th Avenue." Meaning Related will not tear it down when building up Hudson Yards.
In the annals of more instant gratification, we have Googleblog's awesome news that the High Line is now viewable in Google Maps, so you can enjoy the decade-long fruits of its development right from your laptop.
Larger Google Map
Major Step Forward: All Stakeholders Pledge to Complete the High Line at the Rail Yards [High Line Blog]
Take a walk in the park with Street View [Google Blog]
http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2011/1...oogle_maps.php
High Line Book: Cruising, Mother Hubbard, and Helena Durst
by Kelsey Keith
One decade and over 300 Curbed posts ago, two guys checked each other out in a community board meeting where Chelsea residents were clamoring to get a hulking old railway torn down so they could walk from their townhouses to the river without getting covered in pigeon poop. Those two guys ended up turning dumb luck and a network of friends into an activist group that created a multi-million dollar capital project in urban planning ($150 million for Section 3 alone) and managed to outsmart Mayor Giuliani.Friends of the High Line even roped in a few famous benefactors along the way—Diane Furstenberg and husband Barry Diller have pledged $35 million—as well as thousands of regular people supporters who like parks, and architecture, and saving pieces of New York past.
Now, founders Joshua David and Robert Hammond have penned an inside account of how it all went down. High Line: The Inside Story on New York City’s Park in the Sky includes 200 photos, like the ones shot by Joel Sternfeld that helped galvanize the movement. The devil is in the details: we're pretty well versed in High Line-ese, but even we learned a thing or two about the park's beginnings.
[A Railroad Artifact, 30th Street, May 2000. Joel Sternfeld © 2000.]
On how they discovered the High Line: "People would pretend they discovered [it] when they were going to art galleries, but it was really when they were going to gay dance parties at Twilo, the Tunnel, or the Roxy."
The result of 9/11: "Average people got engaged in things that previously only architects and planners cared about. Design competitions and renderings were on the front page of the Post regularly. It became commonplace for people to say things like, 'Should we reestablish the street grid through the super-block?'"
On a 2005 fundraiser at Florent, for which Diller Scofidio + Renfro dressed a model in a dress made of very thinly sliced prosciutto:"After all this, we were going to be undone by the singing vagina and rosary beads. But the article never ran, and the Bloomberg administration continued to view us as acceptable partners."
On the first big donation: "Inside I found Donald [Pels]'s check, which had been written out by hand, like the ones you write to pay the phone bill. It was for $1 million, which made me scream."
On picking the winning architects Field Ops/DS+R: "Liz Diller used the word illicit: you had to crawl under a fence, and you entered a forbidden, secret area that had an aura of past sex and drugs. The team loved the High Line's dark and mysterious quality, which I was also drawn to."
On the other contenders: "The first entry to arrive for the ideas competition was drawn as a cartoon. It turned the High Line into a Mother Hubbard theme park, with the stairs built into a giant shoe."
On the first installment: "It was brutal to see it ripped up. They cut a big hole out of the High Line, and the bulldozers shoved that gorgeous Joel Sternfeld landscape down through it... It became a blank slate, which felt liberating. It freed you from thinking of the High Line purely as something to be preserved and focus [instead] on what you could create there."
On initial Hudson Yards redevelopment plans: "The worst proposal was the Durst/Vornado plan. Standing by the model I started to talk about how terrible it was. The woman tried to tell me how the proposal actually made sense, and I started arguing with her. I had already raised my voice when I recognized her. I was yelling at Helena Durst, the daughter of Douglas Durst."
On public reaction: "We never really knew how many people would come, but we were guessing about 300,000 per year. On a single recent weekend in June, more than 100,000 people visited."
You can buy the book here for $30.
High Line: The Inside Story of New York City's Park in the Sky [highline.org]
http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2011/1...durst.php#more
Community Meeting tonight to discuss planning for the final section of the High Line:
It is time to plan the design of the third and final section of the High Line. Join the conversation. We want to hear from you.
High Line at the Rail Yards Community Input Meeting
Tuesday, December 6 at 6:30 PM
Public School 11 Auditorium
320 West 21st Street
Between 8th and 9th Avenues
Friends of the High Line Co-Founder Robert Hammond will give a project update and take questions from the audience. Members of the High Line design team of James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro will be present to listen to public feedback.
When a Monster Plied the West Side
By CHRISTOPHER GRAY
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/25/re...enue.html?_r=1
Last edited by Edward; February 15th, 2012 at 05:00 PM. Reason: Full text by Christopher Gray deleted
Cool footage of a West Side Cowboy & train in the "King of the Newsboys" youtube vid (@ min. 1:10 right after the opening credits)
I wonder if many of those mangled people met their fate because they thought they could beat the train and cross the street ahead of it.....
It is something I see every day on the commuter line, I would imagine it would be even more prevalent at an open-access rail line running through a busy city at only 6mph.....
The Masterpiece on NYC's Highline
Posted by Eugene on January 2, 2012
see article for more pics
As I walked across New York City's famous High Line for the first time a couple years ago, I was stopped in my tracks by an extraordinary artwork that immediately caught my eye. After admiring it for a few minutes, I never really thought I'd come across it again.
As I was scrolling through Valerie Hegarty's website last night, I was pleasantly surprised to see the stunning piece once again. The work, entitled Autumn on The Hudson Valley with Branches, imagines a nineteenth century Hudson River School landscape painting that has been left outdoors, exposed to the elements. The piece, made of fiberglass, aluminum rod, apoxy, treated plywood, vinyl, acrylic paint and artificial leaves, looks fantastically different in every season.
Tattered and frayed, Hegarty’s painting is based on Jasper Francis Cropsey’s Autumn on the Hudson River of 1860. The partially exposed stretcher bars appear to be morphing into tree branches, as if reverting back to their natural state. As Hegarty describes it, her piece will "appear as if nature has become the artist, altering the idealized image of the early American wilderness to be a more layered representation of the area and times today."
High Line's Third Section Needs Kid-Friendly Space, Survey Says
By Mathew Katz
The people have spoken, and they want a turn on the swings.
The Friends of the High Line, the nonprofit that manages the High Line Park, have released a collection of what hundreds of members of the public want to see in the third and final stage of the park. Among other demands, many asked for a dedicated area on the elevated park for children to play.
“You could add swings to the arches under the High Line at West 30th Street,” wrote Mica and Noa Yoder, two young girls from Chelsea. “As kids in New York City, we've spent more time waiting in line for swings than any other thing in the city!”
Public comments specifically pointed out the need for a proper playground on the High Line, and suggested adding some unique play space for kids.
"I would like to see a train be used as a playground or a play space for children," one person wrote.
The comments come from a public input session that the Friends hosted in December 2011, along with written online submissions. They’ll be used to influence coming designs of the third section of the High Line.
The proposed third section is roughly 31 percent of the overall 1.45 mile elevated rail structure, and will travel west along West 30th Street from 10th Avenue, before looping north along the West Side Highway.
At the December meeting, Friends of the High Line’s co-founder Robert Hammond said the completion of the park’s final section could be fast-tracked because of the sudden re-starting of the Hudson Yards project.
The third section will border the rail yard, where construction on its first building, a huge skyscraper that will house luxury handbag designer Coach, is set to begin later this year.
Community members and park-lovers alike also wanted to see the third section have a gritty, industrial aesthetic and maintain its overgrown look, which is a result of decades of neglect.
Several members of the public asked to keep the original train tracks on the park, while others went a step further: hoping to see some kind of train return to the High Line.
“Adding a locomotive is a great historical reference to what this used to be like in the ‘old days,” wrote one High Line lover. "It would connect the past to today."
http://www.dnainfo.com/20120109/chel...#ixzz1j2kqEVzh
Sounds like a nice idea, but I wonder how practical it would really be.
The best parks are not tiny little things stuck in the corner with one be-all unit that has dozens of kids along it. The best are spread out a bit, and have MANY things for the kids.
Unfortunately, some would not be practical for the space. Swings would best be at the center of the railway for safety, and they take up the most room for the least amount of kids.
Doubly unfortunately, the most fun pieces from my own childhood... the tall slides and the jungle-gyms (monkey bars) have all been lowered down to pre-K heights. Not much fun for any kid that knows how to climb. I know it is for the "safety of the kids", but there is a fine line between safety and isolation. I do not want my son in a hamster bubble.....
Realistically speaking, are there any practical spots on the High Line for a playground of anything more than capitulatory status?
No place for a playground.
There will be plenty of room for a kids playground in the Hudson Yards greenspace. There's a huge playground at 23rd + 11th, one block from the HL. Another big one at Chelsea Piers. And a whole pier that's a playground opposite Gansevoort at the southern entrance to the High Line. There's a huge playfield at Tenth & W 27th, half a block from the HL. Another at Hudson & Gansevoort.
Kids are well covered in this area. They don't need no damned swings up on the HL. Unless the adults get to use them, too. In fact a big swing that arches out from the HL into the air would be fantastic!
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