city break | New york
T
62 |
December 2013/January 2014
River waterfront, is a place with a certain snob appeal. Maybe that’s because the territory it covers is a former industrial district now thick with fasionable boutiques and art galleries, and maybe it’s because of the park’s height – up to nine metres above the ground. “You get such an incredible view,” says Tom Hammar, a wedding photographer who has arrived from Stockholm on a clear morning with a groom and bride in tow, both of them gorgeously decked out for the occasion. “You’re over the street, viewing it from a different perspective. And it’s fun for them,” he says, nodding to the attractive newlyweds, “there are so many people looking at them get married.” Many people, indeed. From the day it opened in 2009, after a tenyear battle waged by preservationists to save the once derelict trestle
Top, an unusual view from the Standard hotel. Clockwise, from above, Patrick Rogers enjoying the sun; Sardinian artists Gianluca Vassallo and Michela Carla, touting for business; Chelsea Grasslands, between West 19th Street and West 20th Street, looking North. IWAN BAAN © 2009
here’s a curious structure in lower Manhattan, a relic of the city’s industrial past made of long concrete and old steel, that calls out to a certain sort of visitor. Do you like to ride in hot-air balloons? Do you dream of living above the fray in a penthouse apartment? Then climb the stairs at the corner of Gansevoort and Washington Streets, in the Meatpacking District, and wander a while in the High Line park as it skims above the streets and wiggles through canyons of tall buildings. If you listen, you may notice that the throb of the city has ebbed slightly and the people on the pavement below look somehow remote. You may even feel a bit superior – your very thoughts seem elevated – because up here, to put it bluntly, you’re not down there. The High Line, a park built on top of an abandoned, elevated, train track that extends for two-and-ahalf kilometres along the Hudson