Description
The High Line is a park in the sky on Manhattan's West Side: an old elevated freight railway turned into a 2.33-kilometer garden walk, running above the streets from the Meatpacking District through Chelsea to Hudson Yards, with wild-looking plantings, art and views of the city and the Hudson River.
The walk itself is the attraction. The concrete paths widen and narrow, swing from side to side and break into long strips that seem to dissolve into the flower beds, while stretches of the old rails poke out of the gravel among the grasses.
The plantings by Piet Oudolf, the Dutch garden designer, are inspired by the wild plants that took over the tracks after the trains stopped: meadow grasses, coneflowers, sumac and smokebush, about 400 species in all, chosen to look good in every season, birch trees shading the southern end.
Along the way there are spots to stop. At 14th Street a sundeck sits beside a shallow water feature, and at 17th Street the Tenth Avenue Square is a small amphitheater built right above the traffic of Tenth Avenue.
Between 25th and 26th Streets the Flyover, a raised walkway, lifts visitors 2.4 meters over the plants, with an overlook facing east. At the northern end, the Spur over 30th Street holds the largest planted garden and the Plinth, which shows a new large artwork every 18 months.
Art turns up all along the line, from sculptures to installations on nearby rooftops. The route also brushes the west side of Chelsea Market, the food hall housed in the former Nabisco factory that the trains once served directly.
The viaduct opened in 1934 to take freight trains off the streets: so many people had died along the street-level tracks that Tenth and Eleventh Avenues were nicknamed "Death Avenue". The line ran straight through blocks of buildings so trains could load and unload inside factories and warehouses.
Trucks made it useless, and the last train ran in 1980, carrying three cars of frozen turkeys. The city wanted to demolish it, but two local residents, Joshua David and Robert Hammond, founded Friends of the High Line in 1999 and fought to save it. The first section of the park opened in 2009.
Don't miss
• The old rails among the grasses.
• The Tenth Avenue Square.
• The Flyover.
• The Spur and its Plinth.
Did you know?
• Before the park, the abandoned viaduct already had 161 species of plants growing wild on it.
• A photographer was allowed to shoot the overgrown line for a year, and his pictures of its meadows helped convince the city to save it.
The walk itself is the attraction. The concrete paths widen and narrow, swing from side to side and break into long strips that seem to dissolve into the flower beds, while stretches of the old rails poke out of the gravel among the grasses.
The plantings by Piet Oudolf, the Dutch garden designer, are inspired by the wild plants that took over the tracks after the trains stopped: meadow grasses, coneflowers, sumac and smokebush, about 400 species in all, chosen to look good in every season, birch trees shading the southern end.
Along the way there are spots to stop. At 14th Street a sundeck sits beside a shallow water feature, and at 17th Street the Tenth Avenue Square is a small amphitheater built right above the traffic of Tenth Avenue.
Between 25th and 26th Streets the Flyover, a raised walkway, lifts visitors 2.4 meters over the plants, with an overlook facing east. At the northern end, the Spur over 30th Street holds the largest planted garden and the Plinth, which shows a new large artwork every 18 months.
Art turns up all along the line, from sculptures to installations on nearby rooftops. The route also brushes the west side of Chelsea Market, the food hall housed in the former Nabisco factory that the trains once served directly.
The viaduct opened in 1934 to take freight trains off the streets: so many people had died along the street-level tracks that Tenth and Eleventh Avenues were nicknamed "Death Avenue". The line ran straight through blocks of buildings so trains could load and unload inside factories and warehouses.
Trucks made it useless, and the last train ran in 1980, carrying three cars of frozen turkeys. The city wanted to demolish it, but two local residents, Joshua David and Robert Hammond, founded Friends of the High Line in 1999 and fought to save it. The first section of the park opened in 2009.
Don't miss
• The old rails among the grasses.
• The Tenth Avenue Square.
• The Flyover.
• The Spur and its Plinth.
Did you know?
• Before the park, the abandoned viaduct already had 161 species of plants growing wild on it.
• A photographer was allowed to shoot the overgrown line for a year, and his pictures of its meadows helped convince the city to save it.