MacGougan at Large

Notes from NYC - 4

High Line

There’s an unusual park along the west side of Manhattan called the High Line. It’s a pedestrian overpass that’s a mile and a half long. It is, in a manner of speaking, an accidental park. It started life a hundred years ago as an elevated freight train track. It spent decades happily bringing freight to and from factories along that side of town, including a giant Nabisco plant. Eventually, however, factories started to depend on trucks more than trains and factories also started to relocate outside of NYC. The trains stopped rolling and the rail line shut down. It might have been demolished, only it was cheaper to just let it sit there and slowly become a ruin. In the 1960s, they raised enough money to demolish the southern end of the line, which is why it isn’t a two mile long park today.

The first section of the High Line, a few blocks long, was opened as a park in 2009, and it’s grown to its current length since. How do you turn an abandoned train line into a park? It looks deceptively simple. You put up some railings so nobody falls off it, you put some benches here and there, you incorporate some flower beds and some art, and voilà - you have a park! It doesn’t hurt that you’re up off the streets and surrounded by interesting tall buildings.

You might think that a surprising long overpass wouldn’t be much of a park, but it’s actually pretty wonderful up there. You’re away from the traffic, you get a great view of the city, and the people-watching is also very good. 

I think of the High Line as a friendly object lesson - perhaps even a vindicating example - for the pack rats of the world, including myself. Those of us who are in no hurry to remove boxes from our attics or eyesores from our yards. Those of us who hold onto old ties because they - not just those specific ties, but also ties in general - might someday come back into fashion. After decades of people calling for the old train line to be cleared away, it’s now viewed as a wonderful treasure.