The High Line

The High Line is an elevated railroad which was built along the western side of Manhattan in the 1930s in an attempt to make pedestrian travel along the street-level a little less lethal. Like many things in New York in the seventies it fell into disrepair and was completely abandoned by the eighties. But not forgotten. In 2009 it reopened as a public space, which has proven to be enormously popular with the yokels, inspiring all sorts of local development and shell games. It currently extends from Gansevoort in the Meatpacking District up Tenth Avenue to 30th Street.

For a detailed account of the High Line's corpse-strewn history, check out this Bowery Boys podcast.


The current head of the High Line, at 30th Street. There are plans to extend it to 34th. The building that looks like a hospital from Buck Rogers is the Associated Press headquarters.






Mandela was here. With his spraycan.






A reminder of the High Line's heyday as an oasis of rampant wildlife in the midst of urban squalor.









 
HL23, residences designed by "vanguard theorist" Neil Denari.


Sarah Sze's "Still Life with Landscape (Model for a Habitat)."




The green-tinted building is the Chelsea Modern, galleries and residences. The one that looks like an Oreo is a condominium complex.




This gleaming cluster of buildings includes the IAC Building, designed by Frank Gehry, and the 11th Ave Condominiums by Jean Nouvel.


Lady Liberty from afar.


A short ride to nowhere.








In New York concert cellists live in the walls like rodents.


Beneath the Standard boutique hotel.




The Standard Hotel, at the tail-end of the High Line, is notable for the "performances" put on in its highly visible windows by the guests, inadvertent or otherwise.