More Views Of The High Line

Jen Chung

Published Jun 10, 2009

Modified Jun 10, 2009

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Jen Chung

Published Jun 10, 2009

Modified Jun 10, 2009

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Here are some of our readers lovely photographs of the new openly High Line park in the Meatpacking District. And it looks like the public aren't the only ones enjoying it—here are a handful of reviews that note the gorgeous views from 30 feet above ground, the lovely plantings, and the vision and determination of the designers.

The Post's Steve Cuozzo is wowed: "If you're tired of High Line hype, you're in for a surprise. It's beautiful, witty, recreationally compelling and emotionally captivating from end to end. What an astonishing variety of effects the designers and landscapers managed to pull off in such narrow confines! The railroad theme announces itself at the outset when you enter at Gansevoort Street: strips of actual preserved tracks and ties, overgrown with a profusion of pretty flowers representing the wild species said to have sprouted after the trains stopped running. It seems contrived only at first. As the track segments end, reappear, fade and return again as you proceed northward, they grow more persuasive and haunting. This was a railroad, and the engineers must have loved the ride. The High Line affords perspectives you can't get from the street or from inside a building."

The NY Times' Nicolai Ouroussoff was worried that he would see "see Carrie stumbling down its promenade with a broken heel, weeping over Mr. Big," but instead: "I was overjoyed this weekend when I climbed the stairs at Gansevoort Street, entered the new city park and felt an immediate sense of calm. Designed by James Corner Field Operations with Diller Scofidio & Renfro, the first phase of the High Line, which opened on Tuesday, is a series of low scruffy gardens, punctuated by a fountain and a few quiet lounge areas, that unfold in a lyrical narrative and seem to float above the noise and congestion below. It is one of the most thoughtful, sensitively designed public spaces built in New York in years...The care and patience with which this project was developed, both on the part of the architects and the High Line’s founders, Joshua David and Robert Hammond, is a rarity anywhere. They have given New Yorkers an invaluable and transformative gift."

Bloomberg News' James Russell believes the designers dodged every pitfall (even though "It could have been overwhelmed by the bureaucrats, the interest groups, the rules. It could have been made too precious."): "The park shoots through city blocks at 30 feet in the air and bores through two buildings. You may pause blissfully above traffic-clogged cross streets, enjoying slotlike vistas across the width of Manhattan. Panoramas of the river open up, dotted with a crooked grid of rotting pilings. The plantings are more mature in the northern end of the park’s first phase, and they already form a flower-dotted, thigh-high meadow so soft you want to throw yourself in. As the plants mature and the colors change, the wonders will only increase."

Here's a map showing where you can enter the park.

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friends of the high line

high line

High LIne park

meatpacking district

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