A new, 3rd, edition of On the High Line has just been published by Fordham University Press / Empire State Editions, and it’s in many ways an entirely new book. I built a companion website that has more than 650 photos — historic, contemporary, aerial and rooftop — at HighLineBook.com, and you’ll find lots more information about the book there.
During the course of my research I learned a lot more about the history of this landscape so many of us love so dearly, and I wanted to share one story that particularly captivated me. I’m pretty sure that the very first essay I wrote as a child was about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, so in a way I’m coming full circle here. To begin, have a look at the Gansevoort Pumping Station in the first decade of the 21st century; it’s the handsome brick building in the center of the farmers’ market:
Designed by the architectural firm Bernstein & Bernstein, this station had five pumps, each of which could deliver 2,700 gallons a minute through the city’s High-Pressure Hydrant system, which was developed in 1909. On Saturday, March 25, 1911, workers at this station were notified of a devastating fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in Greenwich Village, and the FDNY raised the water pressure in the hydrant system to help members battle the fire in a building that no sprinklers. One hundred and forty-six garment workers were killed that day, including 123 women and girls, many of whom were young Italian, Eastern European, and Jewish immigrants.
In later years the Gansevoort Pumping Station became a cold-storage warehouse, part of the municipally operated Gansevoort Market Meat Center, and in 1984 Premier Veal moved in. Efrain Gonzalez’ photo below shows how it was soon decorated by a Lower East Side graffiti artist who painted murals of cows on the sides of the building. These were, in later years, targeted with paintballs by animal activists.
The station was torn down in 2011 to make way for the new Whitney Museum. Sitting below that magnificent building on Gansevoort Street, designed by architect Renzo Piano, is another layer of High Line history.
