Tag: High Line

I took this photo with suitable care, but I spent a lot of time during my few days in New York looking at street views like this and waiting to be able to cross the road. At first I waited patiently for the green man, but New Yorkers don’t do that and I got to understand the flow of traffic on the city’s grid system and jaywalking like the locals. I find street views like this inspirational and they would be even more so without all the traffic, but that’s just the walker in me saying that.

Einstein loves New York apparently.

I’ve walked along the High Line before, but it’s such an inspirational idea for walkers and so well delivered that it seemed a useful way to spend the time before my Amtrak train departed the city. In short, the High Line is a former elevated railway line which had started to fall out of use by the late 1970s. Nearly demolished in the 1980s, it was saved and some visionaries arranged for some sections to be turned into an elevated park.

Some odd things happen in this elevated park, but they’re exciting, as crime is very low and misdemeanours much lower than in other city parks. It is also though very well funded compared to other parks, it’s got something of a charm and talking point nature that isn’t easily replicated.

A sign handily showing the scope of the walkways and that new bit in darker green towards the top is new to me (which is an excuse for a separate post), so I wanted to have a walk to there. There’s a handy “you are here” sign on the map to show where I was, so towards the southern end.

Anyway, enough text, now I have lots of photos….

And this is now the Hudson Yards development that I wrote about earlier on during the week, with the Vessel building just in short towards the right of the photo. It is a really quite invigorating walk and there’s talk of creating a 1.2 kilometre version in London between Camden Town and King’s Cross. For anyone interested there’s more about that project at https://www.camdenhighline.com/, but all credit to them for wading through the amount of documentation they need to read and produce, some of which are explained in the technical feasibility study section.

There’s more of the High Line now open which bends around the left in the above photo, and so that means yet another post is coming soon. Woooo!

This is the photo that I left my loyal readers (or reader) with in my last post, where the High Line meets Hudson Yards. This is as far as I got last time that I came to New York as this section only opened in 2019.

The extension means that the railway line now heads off in the direction of the River Hudson.

It had been rather warm so far on my little walk, indeed perhaps a little too hot. Not that I’m one to complain about the heat of course. That situation changed when walking down here, clearly it’s some form of wind trap from the Hudson, although it was certainly refreshing.

Lots of little rail features remain, although I imagine most of these aren’t original.

These are the Pershing Square Beams, and congratulations for anyone who noticed that from the photo, and this is actually a little playground for children. Industrial and with a secret tunnel, this is a creative idea which I can imagine children would enjoy. Although they won’t at the moment as it’s shut.

Looking back towards Hudson Yards and look at all of those trains!

For this to make more sense, this photo from Wikipedia is useful as it shows the site before Hudson Yards was developed. The trains, which are at what is known as West Side Yard, are still being stored in the same place, but they’ve built the entire Hudson Yards complex on top of them. That’s some considerable feat of civil engineering and it’s no surprise that this project is expected to cost $25 billion, the most expensive real estate work in the United States at the moment, given all these challenges.

So all of that shiny new retail development is sitting on top of some rail tracks.

As with the older sections of the High Line, there’s plenty of floral arrangements about the place.

I confess that I didn’t walk all the way to the end, as I wanted to end up at Hudson Yards so that I could walk to Penn station to get my Amtrak train out of New York.

The Freedom’s Stand art installation by Faheem Majeed which was unveiled earlier this year and it takes its name from from the first black owned newspaper, Freedom’s Journal which was founded in the city in 1827. It didn’t last long, only until 1829, although it inspired The Rights of All newspaper, although that didn’t last much longer either. But, it was still an important principle and there’s more about this at https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/freedom-s-journal-1827-1829/.

With that, it was time to walk to Penn station and I mention that as there are plans to install an elevated walkway, called the Moynihan Connection, to allow pedestrians to walk there.