New York Diary

Manhattan urban relic becomes ribbon of green

SIMON HOUPT

Globe and Mail, April 24, 2006

Back in 1996 or '97, after he started breaking into movies, the actor Edward Norton broke the law on a regular basis.

He lived in the West Coast apartment building in the far West Village, a few blocks s outh of 14th Street, and on some evenings, if he didn't have anything else to do, he and his buddies would scamper up some scaffolding and trespass onto an old abandoned north-south rail bed a few stories above the street.

It could be spooky -- the hulky structure was rusting, and graffiti artists had left their chaotic visions on some of the vacant buildings that sat next to the track -- but it was beguiling, too. Up there, you could feel cut off from the city and yet fed by its energy. Wildflowers and grasses had taken hold, offering a gentle reminder of nature's resilience. "It was one of those things," Norton said recently. "You just couldn't believe something could be left alone in New York long enough for that to happen."

The High Line, as the elevated rail spur between Gansevoort St. and 34th Street is known, was left alone for more than 25 years. Built between 1930 and 1934 because too many people were being struck by street-level freight trains serving the growing city, it was designed to pass the loading bays of warehouses and factories (and sometimes right through them), providing an efficient distribution route for food and merchandise. In the 1950s, as freight transport moved increasingly to interstate trucking, the High Line fell out of favour. The final train ran along the High Line in 1980, carrying a load of frozen turkeys.

Two weeks ago, Norton climbed up on the High Line again, this time without risking arrest. He was there to applaud Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Senator Hillary Clinton, Barry Diller, Diane von Furstenberg, and sundry members of New York's City Council as they broke ground on the transformation of the High Line into the city's next great green space, a six-hectare park in the sky. "This was an opportunity to take what was, in all fairness, an eyesore," said Bloomberg, "and turn it into something more visionary, something with potential, transforming a decaying rail land into a lush band of green. This is going to be a magical experience for everybody."

The High Line was inspired by the Promenade Plantée in Paris, a 4.5-kilometre converted rail track viaduct that cuts through the 12th Arrondissement, just east of the Bastille, which provides one of the simplest and most charming (not to mention cheapest) experiences in that city. Anyone who has ever wanted to catch glimpses of life in Paris above street level can stroll through manicured gardens three storeys above the ground, past the windows of people who live only metres away from the Promenade. Also known as the Viaduc des Arts, the underside of the Promenade features dozens of shops and galleries housed in renovated stone archways, purveying everything from arts and crafts supplies to high-end Lacanche kitchen ranges.

The High Line came very close, many times, to being strangled in its crib.

Rudy Giuliani, who rarely met an old structure he didn't feel could be improved by its destruction and replacement with something shiny and new, tried for years to secure the High Line's demolition. Local developers saw it as a blight on the neighbourhood, which was changing from a meatpacking centre to a hub of high-priced playpens (with the stores Jeffrey, Scoop NYC and La Perla, restaurants Spice Market and Pastis, and SoHo House).

Then Daniel Doctoroff, Bloomberg's deputy mayor, started making noises about the fact that parks have been one of the primary engines of economic development throughout the city's history. Someone else pointed out that Central Park West and Fifth Avenue only developed after the construction of Central Park. Some people began calling the area on the far West Side the High Line District.

And when celebrities came on board, the idea gained speed. At the groundbreaking two weeks ago, Kevin Bacon spoke about the way his father, influential urban planner Edmund Bacon, influenced his way of seeing. "I look at cities, I watch changes, I watch transformations, and it's made its way into my heart, whether I like it or not," he told me. "I think open spaces are important to us as New Yorkers, important for our survival, for our mental health."

Even after it was saved, the High Line's future as an open space wasn't certain. Over the years, people have floated some crazy ideas for its redevelopment: a roller-coaster, a 22-block-long swimming pool, a grandstand for film exhibition and other public performances.

Joshua David, a co-founder of Friends of the High Line, the community group that saved the structure, says that after contemplating all of the various possibilities, he and his group are again remembering the simple charms that enchanted them in the first place: a ribbon of green floating above the city's rushed surface. "I think we're into simplicity," he said. Expanding on that, one of the chief architects on the project recently said it was his goal to save the High Line from architecture. It's already a unique space. Why gild the lily?

The idea of industrial spaces converted into parks is catching on in Europe and North America. Rotterdam is looking to transform a two-kilometre concrete railway track when trains stop running on it in 2009. A three-kilometre rail corridor in St. Louis, which includes an elevated rail structure, is being studied for conversion. (Instead of tearing down Toronto's Gardiner Expressway, why not convert it into a long elevated park?)

"When you make a space like the High Line, like Central Park or any great public space, you end up seeing what's best about a city like New York in action," Norton said. "Every day, you see people from every possible socio-economic [and] cultural background mixing and mingling together and enjoying quiet space, and that's just magical. I think that's just unequivocally great."

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