Manhattan’s concrete jungle just got a lot greener with the opening of the first portion of the long-awaited High Line Park. The now defunct railroad once transported milk, meat and produce without disrupting traffic. Floating 30 feet above the West Side, this urban sanctuary is the perfect marriage of a city’s nearly discarded history and its desire for constant reinvention and perseverance.
The project’s underdog story began in 1999 at a community board meeting when Joshua David, a writer, and Robert Hammond, a painter, discovered their mutual passion for preserving the former railway. The pair founded Friends of the High Line to advocate for its preservation and reuse as a public space. By 2002, the initiative received the city’s support under Mayor Bloomberg. Shortly thereafter an open ideas competition, “Designing the High Line,” received entries from 720 design teams from 36 countries around the globe.
The mile-and-a-half stretch of park runs from the Meatpacking District’s Gansevoort Street to 34th Street in Hell’s Kitchen. The park’s second phase is expected to open in fall 2010, and its third stage is still awaiting a green light. The hovering promenade includes more than 100 species of plants. Winning co-creators James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio & Renfro drew inspiration from the wild landscape that grew up around the abandoned tracks.
The High Line’s presence has ignited a flurry of activity in the neighborhood. At a ribbon cutting ceremony on Monday, Mayor Bloomberg noted that 30 new projects are in the works, including plans for a new incarnation of the Whitney Museum of American Art. City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn described it as “a miracle of perseverance” in The New York Times. “The idea could easily have gone into a file,” she said, of “‘great ideas that will never happen.’”