A former railway line is now a park in the sky, finds Prue Norling
As we stroll in the July sunshine, 8m above the hustle of New York city, it's hard to imagine this "park in the sky" was once the domain of thundering freight trains and firmly in the sights of city fathers wanting to scrap it.
Yet, it was both. The High Line, more than 2km of elevated walkway connecting 22 blocks on Manhattan's west side, began its life in the 1930s as a freight line designed to remove rail hazards from the streets below. The last train rolled along the tracks in 1980 carrying a load of frozen turkeys.
For more than 25 years, the track was left to the weeds and wildflowers as various debates went on about its future. A rail enthusiast failed to return it to its former vocation and, in the late 1990s, it looked doomed as Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's administration and others gunned for its demolition, wanting to optimise rapidly rising real estate value.
This may well have happened if it hadn't been for the serendipitous meeting of two locals, freelance writer Joshua David and artist Robert Hammond.
In 1999, the pair turned up for a community board meeting with an interest in the High Line item on the agenda. They went into the meeting as strangers, ended up sitting beside each other and left united in their determination to save it.
What followed was bigger than either of them ever imagined. They formed the Friends of the High Line and the crusade quickly became not just to save the railway but to turn it into a public reserve.
In 2002, economic feasibility studies concluded that the conversion would in fact enhance the neighbourhood rather than hinder it and, in 2003, a call for development ideas captured the imagination of the design world. An overwhelming 720 proposals were received from 36 countries.
The ball continued to roll ... new mayor Michael Bloomberg got behind the project; a landscape and architecture design team were selected and, in November 2005, the High Line was effectively saved thanks to the donation of the structure from the railroad owners to the City of New York and the signing of a Trail Use Agreement.
The deal was that the city and Friends of the High Line would share the construction costs and that the volunteers would then take on the majority of the operating costs. It has been a harmonious collaboration - section one (Gansevoort St to West 20th St) opened in June 2009, section two (West 20th to West 30th St) opened two years later and the final section at the rail yards opened late last year.
From the 1930's to the 1980's, trains used the HIgh Line to transport freight. Photo / Supplied
Today, more than 4 million people walk the High Line annually and 90 per cent of the operating costs come from donations. The Friends also help with the gardening, lead tours and host special events.
Our High Line experience began at the Gansevoort St end on a beautiful sunny morning. We broke our amble briefly at the Chelsea Market Passage to head down to the famous market for breakfast. In the old days, freight trains stopped here to deliver goods to the upper storey loading dock of what was then the Nabisco Baking Company.
With our fill of bakery treats and coffee we continued, admiring the plantings poking through the old rail tracks (some 300 species of perennials, grasses, shrubs and trees blossom and bloom their way through the seasons) and wending our way through the apartments and office buildings lining the edges.
We shared the pathway with other tourists, New Yorkers taking their morning exercise and overall-clad volunteers tending the garden beds and chatting to visitors.
The designers, landscape architect James Corner of Field Operations, architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro and planting expert Piet Oudolf, have incorporated what they describe as "special episodes" to vary the mood along the walk. Grassed sections are for play; seating areas are for pausing; art installations and at several viewing spurs you can look out on to the streets below.
At West 17th street we look down on to the bustle of 10th Avenue and imagine it as the ominous "Death Avenue" of the early 1900s, when pedestrians took their chances with the freight trains sharing the streets.
Our amble finishes with an appreciation of this impressive city walkway and the mammoth public effort that saved it from the scrapyard.
