The High Line

At the south end of the High Line, an abandoned 1930’s elevated freight rail track turned 21st-century park, a new Standard Hotel is going up on massive concrete piers, boldly straddling this most extraordinary public space. All along its 11/2-mile path (the first third is scheduled to open by the end of 2008), the High Line has become a magnet for innovative architecture; the Standard will soon be joined by a branch of the Whitney Museum designed by Renzo Piano, and experimental architect Neil Denari’s gravity-defying apartment tower is rising a few blocks north. Between the speckled concrete walkways and benches by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Field Operations, Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf is inserting a somewhat aestheticized version of the urban meadow that had previously grown undisturbed on the tracks, with clusters of flowering perennials, wetland grasses, and occasional wooded patches. “To walk on the High Line,” says Friends of the High Line cofounder Joshua David, “is to experience New York from a vantage point that can’t be touched anywhere else.”