Annals of Flânerie: The High Line, Section 2

On Thursday, after leaving the library, I headed west to the High Line Park to walk the new section and take some pictures, which I'm posting below.  The new section awed me as much as the initial one did, though it's different--or feels so--in several ways. It's narrower; it cuts through more buildings and offers more views of shaftways; it's lined with more trees, particularly cherry trees and junipers; it has a catwalk, with several overlooks, the Falcone Flyover, that rises 8 feet above the already elevated walkway, giving you an almost vertiginous feeling of aerial suspension; and it presses into the heart of Chelsea, especially from 18th Street on, curving west onto 10th Avenue, so that you are floating above the heart of New York's art world.  The High Line park highlights what all New Yorkers instinctively feel and what's intrinsic about the city: the radical juxtapositions of everything, the social, historical, cultural, physical, geographical.  In just 500 feet I noted buildings (from tenements to the newest condos) indexing 150+ years of New York's various histories and subhistories. It is the perfect place for a kind of heightened flânerie. Along the line I could see all kinds of people as well, every race and ethnicity, age, social class, and so on. The High Line remains one of the finest attractions in contemporary New York, a marvelous repurposing of what had been a relic of an earlier era, but also a public site, funded by a combination of federal, state, local and private monies, for all New Yorkers and visitors, not just multimillionaires, the well-connected and socialites, to enjoy.  It's the kind of site far more cities and suburbs ought to consider.


Entering the High Line's new section, at 23rd Street and 10th Avenue

At the 23rd St. section

An artist (he said his name was Jason), cutting stencils of the flowers

A ribbon of wood and flora between the buildings

Chelsea's busy streets below (looking west, towards the Hudson and New Jersey)

Flowers and the buildings of Chelsea just beyond (looking east)

A fascinating fence on a condo abutting the High Line park

Duo taking in the scenery

The lower walkway, beneath the Flyover

Open window on unfinished building, or a doorway to _______

People chatting on one of the rest areas

Falcone Flyover

The frame of the observatory deck

The old train tracks

Chatting and chilling

Roofscapes, with the omniprescent Empire State Building in the background

Ribbon of wood

Wildflowers

A building site, looking west from the High Line to New Jersey

Looking north, towards Midtown and the Upper West Side (the Time Warner Center towers are visible in the background)

A children's carnival being erected below

At the overlook

One of the bird feeder/nester/sculptures

The exquisite wooden bleachers

The elevated lawn

Near the end of the new section

Only in New York

Above the line

Near one of Chelsea's cross streets

A car forest east of the High Line

Oranges on one of the bird feeders

The Episcopal Seminary (I think that's it) from the High Line

Buildings closely abutting the elevated park


The marvelous curving bench!

A passerby

An unfinished spur, looking north


The end of the (section 2) line