Section 2 Of New York’s High Line Park Now Open
The new section doubles the length of the public park. The High Line is now one mile long, running from Gansevoort Street to West 30th Street. Photo by Iwan Baan
“We like to think of it as a place where people revel in doing nothing, which is an anomaly for New Yorkers… It has an unscripted, unintended, unprogrammed timelessness. You just get lost in there.” – Elizabeth Diller in New York Times.
Section 2 of New York‘s High Line Park opened for public use last week, June 8th, to the pleasure of every eco-friendly New Yorker and green-hearted tourist the world over.
For those of you who don’t know what High Line Park is, it’s an elevated park build on an old disused railway system that was originally constructed in the 1930′s to lift dangerous freight trains off Manhattan’s streets. It saw over 2 million visitors last year. Previously ending at 20th Street, with the opening of Section 2, High Line Park now spans a mile-and -a-half through the West Side neighbourhoods, beginning at Gansevort Street (just before 14th) to 30th Street in Midtown Manhattan, beautifying the Meatpacking District, West Chelsea and Clinton/Hell’s kitchen respectively. You can enter the park by elevator or stairs, at access points located every couple of blocks. It is a shinning example of urban regeneration; maintaining a post-industrial artifact while at the same time transforming it to create a new insight into the surrounding urban landscape. It is also a personal favourite of mine for a leisurely walk when I’m in that wonderful city.
The High Line features an integrated landscape combining meandering concrete with the naturalism of various plantings. It owes its designer to architects James Corner Operations, with star architects Diller Sconfidio & Renfro. Along the length of the park is a seating both fixed and movable, lighting and various special features such(see below), that make the experience a very pleasurable escape from the hustle and bustle of the gridded landscape of Manhattan below.
Keen to promote the uniqueness of Section 2 in comparison to Section 1 that precedes it, Corner told the New York Times that:
“Through design, we’ve established an episodic sequence of spaces that dramatize or amplify the immediate neighborhood context that we’re moving through.”
Section 2 is filled with little architectural marvels. It begins with a spread of trees and leads into a foot lawn of just under 5,000 square foot that visitors can walk and sit on. This combats complaints that Section 1 of the High Line was too restrictive for people, who could not stray from the path. By the lawn is a seating spread made out of reclaimed teak that rises up some two feet towards the northern end to ensure better views of the city. Then there is the Falcone Flyover – a steel walkway between 25th and 26th Streets that lifts visitors eight feet above the park, which in the context of the aligning tall buildings and magnolia trees, creates a canyon-effect overseeing a moss-covered ground beneath the flyover. Following this, where 26 Street meets 10th Avenue, is a rectangular steel frame which literally frames visitors when viewed from the street below. It is fittingly called “The Viewing Spur”. As High Line Park comes to and end (29th and 30th Streets) a reclaimed wooden bench acts as a rendezvous point, according to Corner. Founder of Friends of the High Line (the non-profit which maintains the park), Joshua David explains how: “Some people use it as a way to move from Point A to Point B, and think of it as a walk or a journey.”
THE VIEWING SPUR. Credit: Design by James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro. Courtesy of the City of New York
Cant wait to try it out when I am in NYC next month!
[...] space to NYC while converting a long since dilapidated area into one of use. Much like the recent “High Line,” the Low Line seeks to creatively add natural space into the urban [...]