Today AD joins architect Nick Potts in New York City for a walking tour of The Highline. Once an abandoned commercial railroad, the area is now a thriving public park lined with designer buildings courtesy of some of the world’s most famous architects. Explore with Nick and discover how The Highline has transformed NYC’s Meatpacking District.
Archival Photos | Courtesy of Archive of Industry
Archival Photos | Courtesy of Archive of Industry
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00This elevated green space weaves through dozens of buildings by some of the world's most
00:06famous architects, but none of this would exist if it weren't for hundreds of deaths
00:09on 10th Avenue nearly two centuries ago.
00:12I'm Nick Potts, I'm an architect, and today we're doing a walking tour of the High Line
00:15in New York City.
00:23This is the High Line Park in New York City's Meatpacking District.
00:26This is a neighborhood that got its name from the industry that it once served, which provided
00:30beef, veal, pork, to markets and cities all throughout the northeastern United States.
00:36It also had a lot of railroad traffic that originally was at the same level of the street,
00:40which turned out to be quite dangerous.
00:42Back in the 1800s, early 1900s, this area was known as Death Avenue, and several hundred
00:47people actually lost their lives due to collisions with trains.
00:52Because of this dangerous situation, the city eventually built an elevated rail line
00:57to permit the huge scale of industrial production to coexist with the street-level activity
01:03of an active neighborhood within a growing metropolis.
01:07After its decline as an industrial neighborhood in the middle of the 20th century, this neighborhood
01:13searched for a new identity.
01:14The redevelopment of the High Line from an abandoned rail line to a vibrant green space
01:19catalyzed more development in the last 15 years in this part of New York City than anywhere else.
01:25It's really a unique situation to have this concentration of contemporary buildings designed
01:30by star architects in one area, and without the High Line, none of these buildings would
01:35have been built.
01:41Behind me is the Chelsea Market.
01:43If we take a bit of a trip back into history, the reason why the High Line as a rail line
01:49existed was because of a building like this.
01:51This was an Nabisco factory.
01:53And so because this was an industrial district prior to its current form, a lot of the buildings
01:59around here would have been similar to this.
02:02Multi-level industrial warehouse buildings connected to the High Line, and connected
02:07the goods being made in this building into the rail system in the country.
02:12You can see there are these sky bridges that connect horizontally from site to site in
02:17these very authentic relics of its industrial past.
02:21As the meatpacking industry and industrialized food production moved elsewhere, this neighborhood
02:26went into decline, and relics that were left really contributed to its decline further
02:30and further.
02:31And it took the redevelopment of places like the Chelsea Market and the High Line itself
02:37to really kind of bring people back and take what had been a bit of an urban liability
02:42and turn it into an asset.
02:44In terms of the redevelopment of the Chelsea Market, it was a bit of a pioneer.
02:48It was one of the first projects in the country that kind of took advantage of these disused
02:54industrial sites and turned them into commodified marketplaces, kind of glamorizing the grit,
03:00rusted steel, exposed brick, this kind of romanticized industrial style.
03:05And so a lot of those warehouses buildings kind of remade themselves into new spaces
03:10within their existing forms, spaces for creative industries, for film studios originally,
03:16for art galleries.
03:17There are people like Diane von Furstenberg, who very early came into this neighborhood
03:21and built a headquarters and a studio.
03:23And the sorts of things that showed up in this building, because it was converted into
03:27a market, it really planted the seed for retail within this very small footprint of what used
03:31to be an industrial neighborhood.
03:38Behind me is 520 West 28th Street.
03:41This is a building designed by British Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid.
03:44This is an example of what we would call a designer building.
03:47It's a phenomenon that you see pop up again and again around the High Line.
03:51In the 15 years since the High Line opened in 2009, it's attracted a collection of buildings
03:56from the most famous architects practicing in the world.
04:00People like Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, Jeanne Gang, Shigeru Ban.
04:04It's almost like a collection of designer clothes in a fancy department store.
04:10It's a phenomenon that's really unique in New York City to have this level of famous
04:15architects working in one area, and it's all enabled by this very famous, very public space,
04:22the High Line, that catalyzed all of these luxury developments.
04:26These buildings are really about a brand, and they're about a premium product being
04:31marketed to buyers both from New York and globally.
04:37You think about a building like 520 West 28th, which is an apartment building, and this very
04:41public element and this aspect of people taking pictures of your building while you're inside
04:47of a very private, intimate space is really engaging in this game of urban peacocking.
04:55It's a private building that wouldn't exist without existing on a very public right-of-way,
05:00and it's showing off in a very ostentatious, look-at-me sort of way, but it's still encompassing
05:07and holding a lot of very private spaces.
05:11Like a lot of designer goods, there's almost an aspect of look-but-don't-touch with this.
05:15None of the buildings on the High Line can be entered from the High Line.
05:20You're looking, you're interacting visually, but you're physically not permitted.
05:25The buildings are actually separated.
05:27None of them touch.
05:28There's no sign of doors going onto the High Line.
05:30So the relationship that these buildings have is purely visual.
05:34You're looking at it as an amenity, but you're physically not engaging with it.
05:44Behind me is the Whitney Museum of American Art, and in terms of location, the Whitney
05:47is also the first building a person encounters as they enter the High Line from the south.
05:52It's this very kind of opaque building that doesn't really engage with this amazing linear
06:00realm that the High Line has created.
06:02Really the Whitney was trying to, you know, add their piece as a public building as opposed
06:07to the private Stark Tech buildings that the rest of the High Line has.
06:11This is kind of your standard approach when you're building a new museum, is to attach
06:15a name to it.
06:16Here, it's Renzo Piano.
06:18This is after the Chelsea Market.
06:20This is after the first phase of the retail takeover of this neighborhood happened.
06:25But what's interesting about it is partially how it references the industrial history of
06:30this site.
06:31It's almost appropriating the language of a factory here in a very vertical form.
06:35You can see the vertical, aggressive, almost industrial expression of the building, which
06:39is a fairly interesting expression for an art museum.
06:43The Whitney really doesn't showcase anything about what's going on inside the building.
06:47It looks opaque.
06:49It's kind of mysterious.
06:50The only time that you really engage with the High Line is when you're inside the Whitney
06:54looking down from the balconies or from spaces at the ends of the galleries that are designed
06:58to look out over the High Line.
07:01As the most public building on the High Line, it's interesting to think that it's also one
07:05of the most unapproachable and severe.
07:08Would it have made sense to be a little bit more public-facing, be a little bit more welcoming?
07:13Over my shoulder is Hudson Yards.
07:19It's a 15 million square foot development at the northern end of the High Line.
07:23The High Line grew from south to north, starting around 14th Street.
07:27Here we're at 30th Street.
07:29And by the time this was ready to be built, it was very apparent that the west side could
07:34take a development of this size.
07:37Because the High Line was so successful in bringing people and bringing money to this
07:42area, developers decided to go big and to create this major commercial, residential,
07:49and retail development right here at the northern end of the High Line.
07:53Here at 30th Street, this is really where the spur of the High Line connected back into
07:59the train network.
08:00If you think back to the origins of this place, everything behind me was originally essentially
08:05a parking lot for trains ringed by a ramp that brought the trains that ran on the High
08:10Line up a level to separate them from the street grid.
08:13At Hudson Yards, they were able to raise the ground plane up to the level of the High Line.
08:18It's really the reconnection of the pedestrian flow that the High Line enables into the new
08:24shopping center, into the new public plaza, where the High Line originally connected the
08:29trains back into the train network.
08:31Now people essentially have taken on that role through this direct connection from the
08:36raised level of the High Line to the raised level of Hudson Yards.
08:40You think about the shed, you think about these giant towers, you think about the vessel,
08:44you think about these mega developments and this mall, it was all really made possible
08:48by the proving of the thesis of the High Line, which is that these designer buildings, these
08:55kind of mini-branded moments can coalesce into an intense, vibrant urban setting.
09:04And over the last 15 years, the success of the High Line really catalyzed the complete
09:08redevelopment of the Meatpacking District.
09:10The High Line has really proved itself out, and the fact that the Meatpacking District
09:15and Hudson Yards have been the center of development and the largest redevelopment project in Manhattan,
09:22it's really because of the seed that was planted with the High Line.
09:26For more stories about how architecture can transform our built environment, check out
09:30our other episodes of Walk & Tour.