Ten years in the making, the first stretch of The Highline finally opened this week (after three years after actual construction). Inspired by a similar park in Paris, the Promenade Plantée, the park makes use of an old elevated freight train line, which was constructed in the early 1930s and fell into disuse after 1980.
The path curves past, through, and under buildings (the rail line was purposefully designed to go through blocks instead of over an avenue), offering a stunning vantage point over the Meatpacking District and Chelsea and hopefully it will eventually expand north to end at the West Side Rail Yards — the city only owns the land up to 30th Street, so this part of the project is still in question.
It’s a little sweaty on a sunny day, but there are shady spots to be found, including Chelsea Market Passage, currently featuring the stunning The River That Flows Both Ways installation by Spencer Finch.
Finch transforms the site’s existing casement windows with 700 individually crafted panes of glass representing the water conditions on the Hudson River over a period of 700 minutes on a single day. To create the project, Finch photographed a floating object as it moved through the landscape of the Hudson River, beginning upriver and following it as it flowed down to New York City. The artist then carefully matched each unique image to a pane of glass.
It’s so lovely, I’m a little sad that it sounds like it won’t be a permanent installation.
