The third and final stretch of the High Line will
open to the public tomorrow, marking the end of a
15-year development saga, and availing to pedestrians a
seamless 22-block stretch between Gansevoort and 34th streets. Known as
High Line at the Rail Yards, the park's final portion stretches from 30th Street and Tenth Avenue, cuts west, and curves north to 34th Street near the West Side Highway. Just one portion of the
1.45-mile-long park, the Tenth Avenue spur, is inaccessible and will remain closed until construction of
10 Hudson Yards is complete in 2015.
10 Hudson Yards is the first tower to rise at the eponymous development. The 52-story Kohn Pedersen Fox-designed building straddles the portion of High Line at the Rail Yards known as the Tenth Avenue spur, where there will be "an extraordinary, sheltered, and vegetated interior room" (spoiler: it looks like a terrarium out of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids). The spur will open with the tower in 2015.
Like the two phases before it, High Line at the Rail Yards is designed by James Corner Field Operations, Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Piet Oudolf.
In a few years when the platform is complete and Hudson Yards rises, the name "High Line at the Rail Yards" will be antediluvian. While the rail yards will still exist under the new neighborhood, they'll no longer comprise the High Line's landscape.
Ladies and gentleman, the end—the very, very end—of the High Line.
Construction on the High Line first
began in 2006, so tomorrow's opening is a momentous final chapter for the ambitious public-private venture. Despite the project's maturity, the addition of the third stretch still feels special, expressly in due to its intimate spatial relationship to the rail yards and the impending
Hudson Yards mega-development. The third portion opens slightly over two years
following its announcement and 34 years following the
last use of the cargo train whose tracks are now home to what some hail as the
best park in the city, and as a pioneer and triumph of urban regeneration.
Saturday, September 20, 2014, by Zoe Rosenberg - Curbed
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