An unused freight-train line that winds its way through Manhattan’s West Side is now a step closer to becoming New York’s next big public park — one that’s 22 blocks long, about half a block wide, and two stories above city sidewalks.
The New York City-based team of Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro is the Bloomberg administration’s preliminary selection to create a master plan for a park on the High Line, the unused elevated railway that stretches from 34th Street to Gansevoort Street in the West Village. The team created one of the four final design proposals in a competition sponsored by the community group Friends of the High Line.
The future park, two stories above Manhattan’s industrial West Side, may provide residents and visitors with points for cultural and commercial activities at Chelsea Market or pools of water for more recreational uses.
According to Joshua David, a co-founder of the group, the FO/DS+R concept shows they have “a unique understanding of what makes the High Line special now — its wild nature. They also have a very innovative approach to integrating the spaces where people might walk with spaces for plants, so that the borders between the two are not so concretely defined.”
The High Line was once an active elevated freight route, built in the 1930s to serve the West Side’s industrial district. After the decline of manufacturing in Manhattan in the decades that followed, the last train traveled on the Line in 1980. The structure yielded an impressive if inaccessible field of wildflowers and weeds amid rusting tracks, but it also faced demolition by the Giuliani administration.
Friends of the High Line was organized in 1999 to save the rail line and convert it into a 7-acre greenway. Finding greater support from current city officials, FHL has developed a number of programs to achieve that end, including an open design-ideas competition — it received 720 entries from 36 countries — which led to 4 Teams 4 Visions, the more recent contest that included the FO/DS+R concept.
David emphasized that the team’s proposal is just a design approach for the park, “a starting point from which to grow. For example, some images in their presentation show a dramatic swimming pool, but that may or may not make it. What’s important is the presence of water up there.”
The next steps for a High Line park include an open community forum in the fall (visit www.thehighline.org for the exact date) and approval from the federal Surface Transportation Board for the railway to become public space. “There’s tremendous momentum for the project that started as an impossible dream,” David said. “It’s amazing how much of it has been realized.”
Credits / Photo: Friends of the High Line / Renderings: Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro
Portfolio(s): Editorial
Project type: Community Outreach, Writing and Reporting
Posted: October 2004
