Photo: Benjamin Sutton.
At long last, New Yorkers will have the opportunity to venture out onto that final section of the High Line, the formerly closed-off stretch of track that veers West at 30th Street and 10th Avenue, heading up towards the Hudson Rail Yards and 34th Street. Although some art lovers may have already gotten a sneak peak at the space thanks to the guided tours of Carol Bove’s Caterpillar (covered in “New York’s 11 Most Amazing Public Art Shows for Spring“), it finally opens to the public on September 21.
As reported by the New York Times, the park’s new addition gradually phases out the familiar hallmarks of the existing promenade, giving up the concrete planking and polished benches made from reclaimed tropical Angelique wood for a park that appears to have been left in something closer to its wild state, the tracks reclaimed by nature after years of disuse.
“We’ve had a lot of feedback from the community saying, ‘We want to walk on the original tracks,’” Megan Freed, communications director for Friends of the High Line told the Times. Master planter Piet Oudolf highlighted just that feeling, creating a series of natural-seeming meadows and woodlands along the original rails and ties, rusty and rotting from years of neglect, now transformed into a pathway.
The new section of the elevated park will also host sculptures by Argentine artist Adrián Villar Rojas (see “The High Line’s Untamed Final Stretch to Host Adrián Villar Rojas Sculptures“) for the next year.
Don’t wait too long to visit though, because this window into the High Line’s wild past won’t be open forever. “A time will come when we’ll have to do some of the things we did on the rest of the High Line,” Friends president Josh David, admitted to the Times, citing the importance of public safety and structural stability.