What started out as an elevated railroad track turned into one of the city’s most beautiful parks. But this didn’t happen without a fight.
After the High Line stopped operating, the tracks were seen as a nuisance by property owners, and they sometimes literally got in the way of the owners’ desire for upward growth. The tracks were a “rusty relic,” something that the people of the newly gentrifying neighborhood of Chelsea did not want. Mayor Rudy Giuliani did not want the tracks to remain either and in late 2001, only days before leaving office, he signed an order for their demolition.
Thus began the fight to keep the High Line alive.
While some New Yorkers saw the High Line as an old, abandoned eyesore, others saw the beauty that it could become. Seeds had begun depositing on the High Line through wind and passing birds, and wildflowers and other plants quickly sprouted. Peter Oblez, a resident of Chelsea and an activist and railroad enthusiast, challenged the demolition efforts in court and a few years later, in 1999, Joshua David and Robert Hammond founded “Friends of the High Line.” They were residents of the High Line neighborhood and advocated for its preservation and reuse as public open space.
Their efforts were pushed along with the assistance of Joel Sternfeld, a photographer commissioned by CSX Transportation (the owner of the tracks), who took pictures of the abandoned tracks and the ways nature had taken them over. His photos helped create public favor for the use of the tracks as a park.
Their hard work paid off and Mayor Giuliani’s demolition orders never took effect. Rather, in 2004, Mayor Michael Bloomberg committed $50 million to the park’s redevelopment. During the next two years, the city gained ownership of the High Line and a landscape architecture firm was selected to design the park, and in April, 2006, groundbreaking was celebrated.
The first section of the High Line (Gansevoort Street to West 20th Street) opened on June 9, 2009, the second section (West 20th Street to West 30th Street) opened on June 8, 2011, and the last section, which runs around the West Side Yards making the High Line what it is today, opened on September 21, 2014.
