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[Update] Here's What The High Line's Upcoming "Spur" Expansion Will Look Like
By
Scott Heins
Published Feb 18, 2016
Modified Feb 23, 2016
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By
Scott Heins
Published Feb 18, 2016
Modified Feb 23, 2016
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[Update Below] The High Line won't stop until all of Manhattan's West Side is one sleek, vegetated sun deck. The park will expand yet again, developing elevated rail track through Hudson Yards into a lean, mean, tourist-pleasing machine.
According to the Parks Department, a 420-ft "spur" will extend along West 30th Street and over 10th avenue. Complete with viewing balconies, large seating steps, and a densely planted "Threshold" area, the section will also feature a 4500-square-foot piazza, complete with a rotating art program. In an email, the Parks Department specified that the new piazza will be "the largest open area on the High Line."
Connecting the Threshold and Piazza areas will be The Passage, a walking space positioned underneath Related's Tower C, which will cantilever over the High Line when it is completed.
Missing from the new renderings is the giant leafy bowl that had been included in 2013 renderings of the spur area. It's unclear why this feature was dropped from the updated design, and whether or not the "Threshold" is its intended replacement. The New York City Parks Department and Friends of the High Line did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the disappearing leafy bowl.
The remainder of the new High Line section will wind along West 30th Street and then arc North, around the area's large rail yards at 12th Avenue, finishing at 34th Street. From there, it will have to watch out for The Spiral, a 1,005 ft office building/glass rubix cube that's coming to Hudson Yards... eventually.
Construction on the new section will begin in late 2016.
Update: In a blog post, the High Line has provided reasonings for some of the Spur area's design changes:
We also considered a design resembling an immersive bowl-shaped structure rimmed with dense woodlands, meant to offer an immersive experience of nature in the heart of New York City. But concerns about cost and scale forced us back to the drawing board. At that point, we looked for inspiration in the "less is more" approach of the Interim Walkway in the Western Rail Yards. We decided that, instead of a massive intervention, we wanted to design something that would focus on what people love most about the High Line and what Friends of the High Line does best: horticulture, programming, and public art.
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hudson yards
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Scott Heins
Scott Heins is a freelance photo and video journalist based in New York City, and a frequent contributor to Gothamist + WNYC. His work often centers around labor rights, housing, and policing. In 2018-2019 he traveled to four states while covering a wave of public school teachers strikes, with work featured in The New York Times, The Intercept, Getty Images, Splinter, and Bloomberg Photos. Scott is a dues-paying member of the National Writers Union's Freelance Solidarity Project.
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