NYC Green Spaces: High Line Park
August 11, 2009 by Amelia
While wandering around Manhattan last weekend, I stopped by the newly opened High Line park. It’s a truly innovative green space, built a few stories above street level on an old elevated train platform running several blocks overlooking the Hudson. It’s a lovely walk. The old railroad tracks and ties rise out of the sidewalk and melt into the grassy beds full of regionally appropriate wildflowers and shrubs:
It’s a beautiful and creative use of space, inspired by the reclamation of the abandoned platform that happened naturally a few decades ago. As Inhabitat writes:
The High Line was originally constructed in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District in the 1930s to lift dangerous freight trains off of city streets. Abandoned in the 1980’s the High Line went into decay and disrepair and was rediscovered in popular consciousness in 2000, after acclaimed photographer Joel Sternfeld captured the beauty of the industrial relic in photos: overgrown with wildflowers — an abandoned human structure essentially reclaimed by nature in a matter of 20 years
In addition to being an extremely functional as a pedestrian artery, the park is also a serene escape from the bustle of the street. Vendors sell gelato and iced tea, and people recline on attractive wooden benches and settees.
I’m so glad I got to visit this green space. On a sunny summer day, with the breeze blowing off of the river, it was a total delight.
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NYC Green Spaces: High Line Park
August 11, 2009 by Amelia
While wandering around Manhattan last weekend, I stopped by the newly opened High Line park. It’s a truly innovative green space, built a few stories above street level on an old elevated train platform running several blocks overlooking the Hudson. It’s a lovely walk. The old railroad tracks and ties rise out of the sidewalk and melt into the grassy beds full of regionally appropriate wildflowers and shrubs:
It’s a beautiful and creative use of space, inspired by the reclamation of the abandoned platform that happened naturally a few decades ago. As Inhabitat writes:
The High Line was originally constructed in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District in the 1930s to lift dangerous freight trains off of city streets. Abandoned in the 1980’s the High Line went into decay and disrepair and was rediscovered in popular consciousness in 2000, after acclaimed photographer Joel Sternfeld captured the beauty of the industrial relic in photos: overgrown with wildflowers — an abandoned human structure essentially reclaimed by nature in a matter of 20 years
In addition to being an extremely functional as a pedestrian artery, the park is also a serene escape from the bustle of the street. Vendors sell gelato and iced tea, and people recline on attractive wooden benches and settees.
I’m so glad I got to visit this green space. On a sunny summer day, with the breeze blowing off of the river, it was a total delight.
Like this:
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