Livin’ The High Line

Eighty-four years ago, on June 29, 1927, the Ile de France sailed into New York Harbor on her maiden voyage. Famous for being the most beautiful ocean liner of the day, the Art Deco inspired ship had a dining room that was decorated in marble and gold and featured a chrome fountain in the center. George Wharton Edwards, an American artist, told the New York Times: “It is so far out of the ordinary and its general beauty is so colossal that it baffles one.” Vincent Astor told the reporter that it was simply “the steadiest steamship he had ever traveled upon.”

They don’t make ’em like that anymore. But the port along the Hudson River is thriving again, and if you close your eyes at around 4:30 pm on an afternoon when one of the Carnival Cruise Ships is heading south toward the harbor, you can almost picture it: the grand and stately Ile de France, pulling into Pier 57 with a band on board on guns booming in welcome.

Dream on….

Readers of this blog know that I have been mourning the impending loss of Stephen Vitiello’s “A Bell For Every Minute” exhibit, which comes down on June 20th.  But you can be consoled by a very cool exhibit in the new section of the park — at around 21st Street — by the artist Sarah Sze. There’s a way in which this is a “living” exhibit: there are trays with seeds to attract birds and orange and apple slices to attract butterflies. And the little bird houses in the sky make a nice contrast to the sturdy human abodes that you can see in the distance, through the exhibit — the stately water towers of the Lincoln Towers apartment building and the Empire State Building.

I caught this fella, a house wren, early this morning. If you were a bird, isn’t this where you’d want to be?

Today is the first day of the Atlantic hurricane season, and this afternoon New York City was under a tornado watch. This made me think about a story I read about the Frying Pan lightship that’s docked at Pier 66a just a few blocks from my home and in view (I think, but won’t know for sure until next week when section 2 opens) of the High Line.

The Frying Pan was stationed at Frying Pan Shoals, 30 miles off Cape Fear in North Carolina. The boat, a lightship, was designed to be a floating lighthouse that would guard other ships and help them avoid running aground on shoals or submerged rocks. On the Frying Pan’s website you can read an account by a former captain of how the anemometer was literally blown away by Hurricane Donna. The boat and crew withstood 50 foot waves and a roll of 70 degrees. Someone else on the website describes life on the Frying Pan — which was launched just a few years before the elevated railroad we know today as the High Line opened for business — as “filled with months of boredom followed by minutes of pure fear.”

For a short time — until June 20th — you can hear the Pier 66 Maritime bell at 31 minutes past the hour, every hour, in the 14th Street Passage of the High Line. It’s part of Stephen Vitiello’s wonderful “A Bell for Every Minute” exhibit which I am so sad to remind you will close later this month. Get there a bit early and you can hear the bell of the noble John J. Harvey, a retired NYFD fireboat that steamed down to lower Manhattan on September 11th, 2001, to try to help put out the fires at the World Trade Center; the Harvey assisted the NYFD in evacuations and then returned to pump water from the Hudson River because the water mains downtown had been damaged by the terrorist attacks. That boat has a stately history too, which you can read about at fireboat.org.

So much New York-ness, present and historical, to be heard in Vitiello’s exhibit. Get there while you can; once it comes down it’ll be gone for good and won’t exist in any form on the web. The pdf of Vitiello’s “sound map” is here and won’t go away, but it’s silent. The bells are glorious. I wish they would become a permanent part of the High Line.

I’ve been preparing myself for the transition from construction site to park. I was basically ready to say goodbye to the good old days of guys in hard hats and welcome the throngs of tourists who are about to replace them.

But then I look out the window and what do I see? Guys in hard hats erecting a scaffold.

So something’s up, though I have no idea what.

One thing I’d like to note, in these waning days of construction-guy appreciation. Take a look at those stanchions (click on the image if you want to enlarge it). When did you ever see building materials laid out so artistically? These guys are impeccable.

Meantime, there’s a lawn to be mowed.

The much-anticipated opening of Section Two of the High Line will take place soon, sometime during June. The 9th would have special special resonance because it’s the second anniversary of the park’s opening in 2009. The 8th would get a jump on that day. But beyond guessing at the opening date what’s interesting to me is the question: how will our experience of the High Line change?

Here are a few early answers:

1. The new section of the High Line runs through a neighborhood that’s much more residential than the southern section. Visitors to the park will have views into the apartments and lofts of people who live along the old viaduct and call it home. How will this change the experience of walking through the park, both by day and by night? It’s unlikely that anyone who lives in view of the park will put on the kind of show that guests to the Standard Hotel do, but who knows. In any case, there’s no doubt that the northern section will create a new sense of intimacy between visitor and resident.

2. The lawn between 22nd – 23rd Streets will offer a whole new way to experience the High Line: while lying down. There are plenty of places to sit and enjoy the park in the first section, including the popular lounge chairs in the sun-deck area and the ubiquitous “peel-up” benches, but a lawn invites us to stop and relax in an entirely different way. People will bring a book, a beach towel, a picnic; they’ll come to the High Line for an afternoon of rest and sun, not just a lovely walk. The “slow park” may get even slower.

3. Just as section one gave us a whole new way to experience Manhattan — from a unique perch of 30 feet above street level — so will the second section open up still-new vistas. One example: we’ll get an expansive view of 23rd Street, a boulevard that’s steeped in history. In the late 19th century it was the center of New York’s theatre district. It’s still home to the storied Chelsea Hotel where Mark Twain lived when it was the tallest building in New York City. Longer ago, when the Hudson River ran up what’s now 10th Avenue (under modern the High Line park) 23rd Street was part of a grand estate of fields and apple orchards that belonged to Clement Clarke Moore, author of A Visit From St. Nicholas.

Section one is steeped in its own history: the original Gansevoort farmer’s market, the birth of the technology of refrigeration, the old piers that supported what was at one point the largest port in the country. Section two offers a whole new chapter of New York history, with a wonderful diversity of manufacturing that includes everything from books and elevators to the foil that keeps cigarettes fresh in their packages.

4. The High Line will no longer be part park, part construction project, which means I’ll have to change the tagline of my blog. Even more, all that anticipation — the endless months of drumroll — will be over.  All that’s left will be a simple walk in the park.

But not for me. I’m getting ready for section 3….