Manhattan: Safety Vests and Hard Hats are the New Black

As I was writing this post, renderings for the gargantuan “Vessel” interactive sculpture at the Hudson Yards site in NYC were released. My reaction was an immediate and visceral NO! I like the idea, but not the execution. Why cheesy-looking bronzed steel? Why such a clunky shape? A missed opportunity! Agree with me? Disagree? I’d like to know what you think. You can leave comments below or email me at janechafinsblog@gmail.com.

The big take-away from my recent visit to Manhattan is that safety vests and hard hats are the new black. The city is evolving and buzzing with new construction – from the 2nd Avenue Subway excavation on the Upper East Side, to the behemoth Hudson Yards complex on the West Side, to Ground Zero downtown where the retail component of architect Santiago Calatrava’s mind-blowing Oculus transportation hub has just opened (see videos below). Nowhere is this more obvious than along the High Line, the lush 1.5-mile-long elevated park linking the Hudson Yards site on the north with the new Whitney Museum on the south. To fully understand what it took to save the abandoned railroad spur and transform it into the mecca it has become today, one need look no further than Phaidon’s lavishly illustrated The High Line.

The High Line. Picture
credit: Courtesy of Kalmbach
Publishing Company

This tour de force of a coffee table book is the visual history of the High Line as experienced by those who designed it (James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio +Renfro). More than two dozen foldouts and 1000 color illustrations detail the history of the park. 

Archival photographs, newspaper clippings, handwritten letters, construction and engineering drawings document the railway’s origins. Trains interacting with cars and pedestrians at street level caused so many causalities that cowboys on horseback were employed to escort trains down Eleventh, or “Death” Avenue, a situation that led directly to the construction of the elevated roadway in 1932.

A timeline in the form of archival video stills covering the path of the railway in its “wild” state after the trains stopped running in the 1980’s opens with fold-outs to reveal color photographs of the littered, graffitied landscape that nature was beginning to reclaim. A second, similar timeline documents the finished project.

Sentiments both for and against preserving the decaying site ran high.  Side by side letters from the offices of then Senator Hilary Clinton and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani echo these sentiments:  the Mayor was in favor of “removing the rusting eyesore,” while the Senator acknowledged the merit of the project and said that it should move forward.

Detailed architectural, construction and landscape plans as well as environmental impact studies for The High Line give us a glimpse into the complexity of the project. Each section of rail track had to be numbered and removed so it could be returned to its original location. The structure had to be repaired. Waterproofing and drainage systems had to be installed, as well as the complex concrete planking, utilities, rails, stairs, elevators and planting beds. Tens of thousands of plants had to be distributed according to detailed plans. All 400 plant species found in the park are cataloged in the book with color photographs.

The author's snapshot of the southern terminus of the High Line, 2016. The 
Whitney Museum is to the left.

The unforeseen ripple effects of the completed park are well documented here. Early estimates of 300,000 annual visitors to the park are blown out of the water by actual numbers as high as five or six million. Guerilla weddings, topless protests, photo shoots, countless planned and improvised artistic events, and even exhibitionists in adjacent hotel windows all are accounted for here. The surrounding neighborhoods have gone through a renaissance that is the envy of countless cities around the world. At the time of printing in 2015, at least 60 projects worldwide had cited the High Line as precedence.

This book makes a great gift – for yourself, or anyone interested in architecture, urban design, landscape architecture, gardens or New York City.

Click here to purchase The High Line from Amazon.com