New High Line designs reveal wilds of W. Chelsea

The 22nd St. Seating Steps/23rd St. Lawn section, featuring open grass and amphitheater-style seating at a wider area long the High Line.

By Patrick Hedlund

A walk-through art gallery, public sundeck and wading pool, wildflower fields and full-grown sumacs sprouting from underneath pedestrians’ feet. No, these aren’t new additions planned for Central Park, but just a few of the features unveiled by Friends of the High Line this week in never-before-seen designs for the elevated West Side railway-turned-parkland.

With an opening date for the initial section of the High Line Park expected later this year, the Friends gathered with planners and top city brass to reveal plans for the second section, running from 20th to 30th Sts. through the heart of Chelsea. Department of City Planning commissioner Amanda Burden and Parks Department commissioner Adrian Benepe joined FHL founders Robert Hammond and Joshua David at the Wednesday presentation, which introduced the public to a new book and renderings for the High Line that will please both green thumbs and the West Side’s park-starved population alike.

The new designs all carried the thread of diverse, seasonal greenery growing adjacent to, and sometimes below, the narrow open space, while also incorporating innovative adaptations to the High Line’s original configuration. In addition to the myriad wild foliage that undulates along the Park—from grass and perennial flowers to canopy trees—the renderings integrate modern, pedestrian-friendly amenities into the historic railway’s currently built form.

Among the new design elements introduced were the “Chelsea Thicket” from 20th to 22nd Sts., featuring textured, seasonal plantings; the 22nd/23rd St. section, with amphitheater-style seating and a public lawn; the “Woodland Flyover” from 25th to 26th Sts., where the walkway elevates above the moss-covered High Line bed, with sumac trees growing upward; the 26th St. “Viewing Spur,” where visitors will be able to sit and look out over the street through a frame once home to a billboard; and the “Wildflower Field” from 27th to 30th Sts., featuring both native and new species of blooms.

Viewers also glanced at the Park’s sundeck and wading pool area between 14th and 15th Sts., where passersby can cool their heels in running water next to the walkway or lounge on a reclined deck chair, as well as the point of passage through Chelsea Market, where artist Spencer Finch will install a public art piece with multicolored glass panes.

Repeatedly using the word “magical” to describe the High Line’s evolution from industrial train tracks to diverse green space, Burden gushed in referring to what first seemed an “impossible premise to preserve this elevated railway.”

Now, “it’s a park in the sky that could transform the area,” she said.

Benepe, who equated the project’s initial undertaking to “jumping out of a plane,” added that Park’s greatest asset would be its benefit to a West Side community “dramatically underserved when it comes to open space.”

Many points along the Park offer unfettered views of the surrounding skyline and Hudson River, allowing visitors to “see the city in ways you’ve never seen it before,” noted Ricardo Scofidio, principal of the architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

The second section is not expected until 2009, Hammond noted, but the High Line’s first stretch is still on track for a late 2008 opening. The Park will be closed at night in accordance with Parks Department regulations, and residents of any adjacent developments will not be given any privileged access to the Park through private entrances, Burden said. When it’s finished, she added, it will constitute “the most extraordinary park in the city.”