NY Railway Becomes Landscaped Oasis

The High Line is dotted with graceful matching concrete-wood benches, rustic Ipe wood chaise lounges and even a glass sculpture. The Sunken Overlook, an aerial auditorium with a gaping window, is suspended over a street intersection and perfect for idling on wooden benches and lunching.

On the lower West Side of Manhattan, within eyeshot of the Statue of Liberty, looms an elevated freight railway relic snaking through, under and around old commercial buildings, that is blossoming from an old eyesore to a unique narrow, aerial urban parkland.

As the once-grungy neighborhoods gentrify and the old buildings are converted to residences, work continued through August to convert the major portion of a nearly 2.4-kilometer-long 1934 double-track rail spur from a rusting industrial hulk to a 2009 horticultural oasis called the High Line. The last train ran in 1980.

In 2005, CSX Transportation, Inc., the carrier owning the High Line, donated it to the city under an agreement that it would become a "trail," opening the way for park use. Construction began in 2006; it is said to be fully competed by 2010.

Partially opened on June 9, from near West 10th Street to West 20th Street in the old Meatpacking District, it has quickly been taken wholeheartedly by New Yorkers. It is expected to be opened north through West Chelsea to West 30th Street, or nearly to Clinton/Hell's Kitchen and the rail yards for Penn Station in Midtown in 2010.

Colorful wildflower, grass and trees bloom along a half-mile stretch of the three-story high path highlighted on its wandering by glimpses through greenery of railroad ties, rusty rail, switch points and crossovers. A nearly mile-long stretch is still being converted from rail bed to flower beds along with more graceful drinking fountains, access stairs, an elevator and other amenities.

Friends of the High Line was formed in 1999 to advocate preservation of the structure and reuse as a public open space, leading to its transformation from a branch line to linear garden. But the group didn't get city approval until 2002, the group's website said.

The following year a design competition among 729 teams from 36 countries was held. The design team selected in 2004 was led by James Corner Field Operations, a landscape architecture firm, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, an architecture firm, and "experts in horticulture, engineering, security, maintenance, public art, and other disciplines," the website said.

Friends of the High Line said the old railway "is structurally sound - it was built to carry two fully-loaded freight trains - but minor repairs and waterproofing" had to be done to the steel and concrete and drainage systems had to be installed. It is important to note that there is no walking on the railways, but you are allowed on the concrete trail.

Source: news.xinhuanet.com