The Highline

The Highline

The High Line is urban redevelopment at its creative, nondestructive, value-added best, the city's first elevated park, built on top of a repurposed 1920s-era elevated freight train track, all rusted baroque, that winds through the far west Village, meatpacking district and Chelsea for one and a half miles. Finally abandoned to the elements in 1980, the stretch of tracks had, by the late nineties, fallen into a state of remarkably complete disrepair. The surface area of the overpass, restricted to all but the most driven individuals, marshalling considerable ingenuity, was overgrown with a diverse spread of fauna and had begun to be hailed as one of the city's unrecognized miracles, a testament to the power and will of nature to overcome, even overwhelm the imposing urban grid whenever an opportunity arose. A group of sympathetic souls consolidated an organization to prevent demolition of the High Line, and in 2004 won city support for a comprehensive redevelopment and re-landscaping of the elevated tracks, along the model of Paris' Promenade Plantee. Though the construction is still incomplete, the neighborhood has already begun to liven up in expectation of the new attraction, with some of the city's most notable new restaurants, galleries, and boutiques clamoring for space near the new park.