Highline Park Right On Track

[New Jack City]

NY POST

NEW PARK IS RIGHT ON TRACK

By TOM TOPOUSIS

May 31, 2004 -- One of New York's hidden treasures - a rusting elevated railroad that stretches down Manhattan's West Side - is about to take its first step toward a public debut.

Four design teams were picked last week to compete for the job of turning the long-dormant freight railroad into the city's newest public park.

Running more than a mile, from the West Side railroad yards at 30th Street to the Meatpacking District, the High Line is an oasis in the sky now covered with wildflowers and trees and inhabited by birds and butterflies.

"The High Line is just so magical," said city Planning Commissioner Amanda Burden. "I always said that if I were in a position of power or influence, saving it would be one of the first things that I would do."

The future wasn't always so bright for the High Line, last used to carry freight in 1982. Just four years ago, the city was ready to begin demolition on the structure.

But two West Siders who were fascinated with the structure began a drive to save the railroad, recognizing its potential as a public project that would lift New Yorkers 35 feet above the street and what seems a world away from the congestion below.

Robert Hammond and Joshua David in 1999 formed a group called Friends of the High Line, which began to turn the tide from demolition to preservation. Their efforts won over officials in the Bloomberg administration.

"It's so easy to live close to it and never really understand what it is," said David. "But just the idea that this hidden structure existed and ran 22 blocks was fascinating to me."

In a rare walk along the High Line - shut off from the public by its operator, CSX Railroad - The Post caught a glimpse of Manhattan from the elevated tracks, which have become a nature preserve.

Between two tall warehouses, a small forest has sprouted. Near 14th Street, a wild cherry tree is taking root beside a rusting railroad switch. Hyacinth, Queen Anne's lace and purple aster flourish in the sun-drenched sections of the old viaduct.

A final design for the railroad's conversion will be picked in July, after the three teams put their proposals up for public display.

With an estimated $65 million price tag, the project is expected to be open to the public late in 2006.

Here's some pictures of the Highline I found in it's current state:

[BigMac]

Friends of the High Line

Designing the High Line - View all 720 Proposals

[New Jack City]

NY POST

HIGH LINE PARK ON RIGHT TRACK

October 7, 2004 -- The city's unlikeliest new park — set on an abandoned elevated railroad line on the far West Side — took a step closer to reality yesterday when top city officials announced they were pumping another $27.5 million into the project.

Mayor Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, possible rivals in next year's mayoral election, were as chummy as could be at a press conference on the unused tracks three stories above 14th Street at Tenth Avenue.

"New York is ultimately about reimagining itself every generation," said Miller, an early champion of the plan to transform the 22-block stretch of rail line into a park in the sky.

City funding for the High Line, as the rail line is known, now totals $43.5 million. Officials said private and other government funds would have to be raised to meet a final construction tab estimated at up to $100 million.

[New Jack City]

NY Times

Designers Detail an Urban Oasis 30 Feet Up


A computer-generated image of a proposed entrance to the High Line park. Designs go on display tomorrow at the Museum of Modern Art.

By ROBIN POGREBIN

Published: April 19, 2005

The mile-and-a-half path of concrete planks will weave among plants and wildflowers like a curvilinear boardwalk meandering through a floating garden. Some entrances will emphasize a gradual ascent from the grit and congestion of the city's streets to an oasis of pastoral calm. The 22-block stretch is to include the unexpected: an adjustable chair that can become a table or a chaise longue; a walkway flanked by a wetland with lily pads.

These details and others have been refined over the last several months by designers who plan to create an elevated public walkway out of the High Line, an abandoned railway that runs 30 feet above the city between 10th and 11th Avenues in Manhattan, from 34th Street to Gansevoort Street in the meatpacking district. The most recent digital drawings and renderings, including a 20-foot-long architectural model, go on display at the Museum of Modern Art tomorrow.

"Landscape architecture and urban design are completely integrated," said the show's curator, Tina di Carlo, an assistant curator in the museum's architecture and design department.

Construction of the project, designed by the New York-based architectural firms Field Operations and Diller, Scofidio & Renfro, in cooperation with the city and the nonprofit group Friends of the High Line, is expected to begin by year's end.

However innovative the design, the ultimate aesthetics and workaday experience of the High Line will hinge on how it relates to its surroundings, which are currently in flux. New construction is planned along the High Line, including several buildings that will intersect the railway. In addition, the Jets stadium and convention center, if built, could have a profound impact on the High Line's views and crowds.

The design team has been focusing on the first phase of the High Line, the southernmost portion, from Gansevoort Street to 15th Street, deciding on elements like seating, security and access. "It's answered a lot of the practical questions we've always had: how do you make it safe, and how do you get up there? At the same time, how do you keep it interesting?" said Robert Hammond, a founder of Friends of the High Line.

The designers are beginning to consider how the High Line will pass through or abut various new buildings, including a 15-story André Balazs hotel designed by Polshek Partnership at 13th Street; a building designed by Robert A. M. Stern between 17th Street and 18th Street, developed by Edison Properties; and a building designed by Frank Gehry, developed by Georgetown Partners between 18th Street and 19th Street.

"Yes, it poses technical and financial burdens on the hotel," Mr. Balazs said. "But I think the goal is to embrace it. As difficult as it is, I think it's really worth the challenge."

Much of the designers' work has been devoted to seeking a balance between preserving what one called "the romance of the ruin" - wild grasses growing up through the metal skeleton of rails and rivets - and creating a fresh green corridor for pedestrians. (The High Line is currently off limits.) "There is an ecosystem in place," said Elizabeth Diller, one of the architects. "The moment you let people up there, that ecosystem will be destroyed. We have to find a way for humans and growth to coexist."

James Corner, the founder and director of Field Operations, the project's landscape architect, described the challenge as "how to maintain the magic of the High Line as a found landscape in the city, yet at the same time accommodate the numbers of people who want to stroll up there." The concrete planking system is to cover about half of the High Line, a soft layer of vegetation the remainder. But these proportions are flexible; planks can be added to reduce the amount of greenery and vice versa.

"We're trying to keep this as uncommercialized as possible," said Ricardo Scofidio, another of the architects, "to keep it simple and natural and not to overwhelm it."

In developing plans for the downtown portion of the High Line, the designers have been focusing on how the walkway will interact with the street, distinguishing among the different entrances in terms of speed - some will provide a slow ascent; others will be more direct. Every access point is to have a presence at ground level.

The one at Gansevoort, for example, is to feature a large glass-encased area that may be used for a restaurant directly underneath the High Line; it will rise gradually to the walkway, so that people come close to the metal bones of the structure as they move up into it. Also at Gansevoort, where the railway begins, the architects plan to leave the existing exposed section of the High Line, "so you can clearly understand the construction of the structure," Mr. Scofidio said.

The design calls for a variety of seating options all along the High Line, including loose chairs and benches - "all sorts of combinations as to how the public could inhabit this space," said Ms. di Carlo, the assistant curator. "A couple or a couple with a baby or disabled people or someone walking their dog," she added, "all of that has been studied."

The designers hope to use the areas of the High Line that are covered by buildings as rental spaces for events to generate revenue. Lighting along the line is to be kept as a soft ambient glow below eye level. The designers expect the area to be monitored by video cameras. The architects plan to keep the original steel railings - "designed to keep locomotives from plunging into the street," Mr. Scofidio said. To meet the code requirements at crosswalks would require the installation of eight-foot walls that would obstruct east-west views. As a result, the architects are planning to add glass or a fine mesh to the railings and to create a wetlands area at 14th Street that will keep people from the edge.

The show opening tomorrow at the Modern features large-format photographs by Joel Sternfeld, a New York photographer who has documented the High Line's current rough, overgrown condition.

The design team also includes Piet Oudolf, a horticulturalist; Olafur Eliasson, an artist; and the firm Buro Happold, structural engineers.

Friends of the High Line, the nonprofit group that successfully fought to save the railway from demolition in 2001, has raised about $3.5 million in private money. The city has committed about $50 million, and support is expected to come from the federal government and the state.

"For a long time, the mystery of the High Line was it could be anything," said Joshua David, a founder of the High Line group. "Now we have a design developing that retains that same sense of mystery and possibility even as we're narrowing down to a singular vision."


The High Line runs from Gansevoort to 34th Street in Manhattan.

[3tmk]

Swivle's gonna like this
if he didn't already know about it.
btw I don't understand what they meant by how it will fit in with newer buildings?
it's not like they're constructing the new buildings on top of the tracks

[Vlad the Great]

Yeah Swiv's gonna like this

But he had a thread on it a while back, so he knows about it and loves it.

Good to see that construction (or renovation) will start this year!

[swivel]

Excellent

outstanding.. I couldn't be happier with the way things are going.. design, standards, feedback.. I think ppl are really beginning to realize how important, and significant this renovation/restoration is (will be)... and in so many different ways..

the moma showing will be a must see

[swivel]

UPDATE:

[Third of a kind]

in the blocks in the 20's it would be nice to see it incorporated w/ all of the galleries in that area...well I guess only time will tell

[swivel]

word..

[Jo]

This park is an unusual and great idea!

If I get to NYC after completion I'll surely want to walk the whole stretch of it.

[swivel]

FHL E-Mail Newsletter
May 9, 2005


IN THIS ISSUE
Dia Art Foundation Plans New Museum Next to the High Line
Positive Review by WSJ's Architecture Critic, Ada Louise Huxtable
May 11 Deadline For New High Line T-Shirt Submissions





DIA ART FOUNDATION PLANS NEW MUSEUM NEXT TO THE HIGH LINE
Today The New York Times reports that the Dia Art Foundation plans to construct a new museum adjacent to the High Line. The museum would be located at the corner of Gansevoort and Washington Streets, at the High Line's southern terminus, in the Meatpacking District.

Read The New York Times article

About Dia: Dia Art Foundation was founded in 1974. A nonprofit institution, Dia plays a vital role among visual-arts organizations nationally and internationally by initiating, supporting, presenting, and preserving art projects, and by serving as a locus for interdisciplinary art and criticism. Dia presents its permanent collection at Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries, in Beacon, New York; exhibitions and public programming in New York City; and long-term, site-specific projects in the western United States, in New York City, and on Long Island. For more information: http://www.diacenter.org

"The new High Line park, an industrial reclamation project in-keeping with Dia's long-standing interest in renovating existing structures, will become one of the most exciting new features of New York City," said Dia's President and Director Michael Govan. "We would like to provide a cultural anchor for this innovative public space. It's perfect for Dia – we would have two large light-filled museums on the Hudson, one in Beacon for the collection and one in Manhattan for more contemporary exhibitions." The Nabisco printing facility that has become Dia:Beacon was originally connected by the High Line rail to the former Nabisco buildings on 14th Street, as well as to Dia's proposed new site a few blocks south. The Hudson River's proximity and the adjacent single-story meat market buildings afford the location an unusual abundance of light and open space, not unlike Dia's property in Beacon.

Dia's proposal will require a public review process, and approval by the City of New York. Dia hopes that, if approved, the new facility could open as early as 2007 in conjunction with the first phase of the High Line.


[ BACK TO TOP ]







POSITIVE REVIEW BY WSJ'S ARCHITECTURE CRITIC, ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE
The May 4 edition of The Wall Street Journal included a very positive review by architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable of "The High Line" exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art and the High Line project as a whole.

"'The High Line'—a project initiated by a private group, the Friends of the High Line, which has already enlisted state and city support and funding—brings us home to New York and a proposal that ranks with the best of them," writes Huxtable. "This imaginative and sensitive scheme is so well conceived and its design development is being so well orchestrated, in everything from its excellent Web site to its practical execution, that it serves as an object lesson for a preservation movement increasingly mired in sentimentality, amateurism and political infighting as judgment is defaulted through a lack of appropriate critical standards for modernist buildings coming of age."

Read The Wall Street Journal article


[ BACK TO TOP ]







MAY 11 DEADLINE FOR NEW HIGH LINE T-SHIRT SUBMISSIONS
Friends of the High Line is looking for a new T-shirt design. The shirts will be worn by members of the public who want to show support for the High Line at an upcoming New York City Council hearing. Following the hearing, the shirts will be sold in local stores.

Contest Deadline: May 11, 2005

The winning designer will receive two tickets to Friends of the High Line's 5th Annual Summer Benefit, on July 13, 2005 ($1,000 value).

View guidelines and submission requirements

...

[New York Yankee]

where is this place? the place of an old rail way?

[swivel]

exactly.. this site will tell you all about it...

Friends of the High Line

[swivel]

...

[swivel]

MAJOR FEDERAL AUTHORIZATION FOR HIGH LINE PROJECT

Surface Transportation Board grants railbanking certificate, allowing reuse of New York City's elevated rail structure as pedestrian walkway


June 13, 2005 (New York, NY)—The High Line project received a crucial federal authorization today, effectively opening the way for the High Line's transformation to public open space.

The Surface Transportation Board (STB), the federal body that oversees rail corridors, issued a Certificate of Interim Trail Use (CITU) for the High Line. The CITU enables CSX Transportation, the High Line's current owner, to negotiate a trail use agreement with the City of New York. This agreement would transfer control of the High Line to the City for use as a public walkway and open space.

"The STB's ruling is a great win for all New Yorkers," said Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. "It allows us to implement our plans to preserve this valuable historic resource, create a much-needed public open space, and strengthen our city's economy."

"Thanks to the STB's ruling, we can move forward with plans to create one of the State's most unique and exciting public open spaces on the West Side of Manhattan," Governor George E. Pataki said. "By using the visionary railbanking program to transform this historic structure, we demonstrate New York's commitment to preserving its heritage and its environment at the same time that we create economic development opportunities for our future."

"We're very pleased with the STB's ruling," said John P. Casellini, Vice President for Public Affairs, CSX Corporation. "We look forward to working with the City of New York on an agreement that will allow the High Line to be used for the public's benefit."

"This is the most important victory yet for the High Line," said Robert Hammond, co-founder of Friends of the High Line (FHL). "Just six years ago, saving the High Line seemed like an impossible dream—and now it's reality. Thanks to railbanking, which preserves priceless transportation corridors and permits their reuse as public parks and walkways, one of New York City's most exciting preservation and urban planning projects can now move toward construction."


About the STB Ruling
By issuing a CITU, the STB has enabled the City and CSX Transportation to conclude agreements that will allow the High Line to become a railbanked trail. Railbanking, a method of creating trails from out-of-use rail corridors, was established by a 1983 Congressional amendment to the National Trails Systems Act. There are over 13,000 miles of rail-trails across the country, with nearly 16,000 more in development.

The City originally petitioned the STB for the CITU in December 2002. Subsequently, the State of New York and CSX Transportation filed with the STB supporting the City's request. In addition, a group representing the underlying property owners filed with the STB withdrawing its previous objections to railbanking.


Next Steps
The City of New York and CSX Transportation will proceed to conclude an agreement for trail use on the High Line. This legal structure is expected to include a transfer of ownership of the High Line from CSX Transportation to the City. Ground-breaking is projected for later this year. It is anticipated that the first phase of the High Line to be converted (from Gansevoort Street to 15th Street) will open to the public in late 2007 or early 2008.


Other Recent Advances for the High Line Project
• Funding: In the fall of 2004, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Gifford Miller announced new capital funding commitments to the High Line project. The City's capital funding commitment now stands at $51.3 million. Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton worked with Congressman Jerrold Nadler to bring $1 million to the project in the FY 2005 omnibus appropriations bill. Congressman Nadler has also included $5 million for the High Line in the six-year transportation bill now moving through Congress; Senators Schumer and Clinton are working to supplement that allocation while the bill is in the Senate. $3 million in federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program (CMAQ) funding was allocated to the project by the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council's New York City Transportation Coordinating Committee in January 2005. In addition, New York State Assembly Member Richard Gottfried worked to bring $50,000 in State Multi-Modal Transportation Program funds to the High Line.
• Design/MoMA Exhibition: A widely acclaimed Preliminary Design for the first phase of the High Line's transformation (from Gansevoort Street to 15th Street) is on view at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York City, until October 31, 2005. The Preliminary Design was created by Field Operations (landscape architecture), Diller Scofidio + Renfro (architecture), and a team of consultants including experts in engineering, security, lighting, and numerous other disciplines. The Preliminary Design can also be viewed at www.thehighline.org/design.
• Zoning: A rezoning proposal for the West Chelsea neighborhood surrounding the High Line is now moving through the City's public review process. The proposed rezoning includes a number of provisions intended to support the High Line's reuse as a public space. The proposal would also provide opportunities for new residential and commercial development and would enhance the neighborhood's thriving art gallery district. Adoption of the rezoning proposal is expected to take place in June 2005.
• Dia Plans Move to High Line: On May 9, Dia Art Foundation announced a proposal to construct a new museum adjacent to the High Line. The museum would be located at the corner of Gansevoort and Washington Streets, at the High Line's southern terminus, on a City-owned site in the Meatpacking District. Dia seeks to have the main entrance to the new exhibition space on the High Line level. The plan must go through the City's Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) before construction can begin.


High Line Project Background
Since 1999, Friends of the High Line (FHL) has been working to preserve the High Line for reuse as an elevated walkway. The City of New York endorsed the project in 2002, when it filed with the STB for a CITU.

The High Line was built in the 1930s as part of the West Side Improvement, a major transportation infrastructure project which eliminated street-level rail crossings from the northern tip of Manhattan down to Spring Street. When rail traffic declined in the 1960s, the southern section of the Line was demolished.

Legal disputes about the future of the High Line began in the mid-1980s, after the final train rolled down its tracks pulling a carload of frozen turkeys. Underlying property owners began lobbying for the structure's demolition, arguing that the Line prevented them from developing their properties. A local resident named Peter Obletz fought for the Line's preservation, at one point even purchasing the Line from Conrail (the High Line's owner at that time) for $10. The purchase was later challenged and overturned by the underlying property owners.

In 1992, the Interstate Commerce Commission (which later became the STB) issued a conditional abandonment order, which would have allowed demolition of the structure if certain financial conditions were met by the underlying property owners. The attempts to satisfy those conditions were never approved by both the railroad owner and the STB.

In 1999, neighborhood residents Joshua David and Robert Hammond founded Friends of the High Line with the mission of converting the structure to an elevated public space—a greenway or promenade—and began building community support.

The Giuliani administration favored and worked towards the demolition of the High Line. When Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took office, he directed his administration to take a fresh look at the High Line's potential. In 2002, FHL commissioned an economic feasibility study that showed that the High Line would add value to its surrounding neighborhood, generating $262 million in new tax revenues over a 20-year period. In December of 2002, the City changed its policy and took the first step to converting the High Line to a public walkway by filing with the STB for a CITU. The State of New York and CSX Corporation filed in support of the City's petition in the fall of 2004, and the underlying property owners filed to withdraw their objections to railbanking later that year.


About Friends of the High Line (FHL)
FHL is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization established to preserve the High Line for reuse as an elevated public open space. Support for the project comes from hundreds of local residents, business-owners, and civic organizations, as well numerous elected officials. For more information on Friends of the High Line, please visit www.thehighline.org.


PLEASE NOTE: The High Line is currently private property, owned by CSX Transportation, and managed by CSX and the City. At this time, the site is not open to the public, and trespassers will be subject to prosecution.


Contact:
Joshua David, FHL (212) 206-9922; josh@thehighline.org
Robert Hammond, FHL, (212) 206-9922; robert@thehighline.org

[swivel]

Wednesday, June 16, 6:00pm - 8:00pm
Lotus
409 West 14th Street (between 9th & 10th Avenues)
Cash Bar


On Monday, June 13, the Surface Transportation Board, the federal regulator with oversight of all rail lines, approved the City of New York's request for a Certificate of Interim Trail Use, or CITU, for the High Line.

This is our biggest victory to date. It means that the most significant obstacle to preservation and reuse of the High Line has been overcome.

Now the City can conclude negotiations on a Trail Use Agreement with CSX Transportation, the railroad that owns the High Line, and plans for the start of construction can move forward.

Because of this victory, the dream of the High Line can finally become a reality.

Friends of the High Line hopes you will join us to celebrate this historic advance.

For more details on this important advance, view the press release.

NOTE: We still need people to support the High Line at City Hall on the morning of Wednesday, June 15. You don't need to speak—just attend—and you will get a free t-shirt. View City Hall hearing details.

About the map on this invitation: Paula Scher, a partner at Pentagram, painted this map of the High Line neighborhoods as part of a larger series of maps that will be exhibited at Maya Stendhal Gallery in fall 2005. (To see Scher's High Line Map without cropping, click here.) Other work by Scher for FHL includes the organization's logo; Reclaiming the High Line, the publication of the 2002 reuse study FHL produced with the Design Trust for Public Space; exhibition graphics and publication for FHL's 2003 ideas competition; and FHL's overall graphic identity.


Friends of the High Line
430 West 14th Street, Suite 304
New York, NY 10014
(212) 206-9922
(212) 206-9118 fax
info@thehighline.org
http://www.thehighline.org


© 2005 Friends of the High Line

[swivel]

[TalB]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/15/ny...gewanted=print
Rusty Railroad Advances on Road to Pristine Park

By PAUL VITELLO


If the plans materialize, the project would become one of only two elevated parks in the world; the other, also carved out of an abandoned railroad viaduct, is the Promenade Plantée in Paris.


The project was designed by the New York-based architectural firms Field Operations and Diller, Scofidio & Renfro, in cooperation with the city and the nonprofit group Friends of the High Line.


A computer-generated image of a proposed entrance to the park.


[i]According to the plan, one entrance will feature a large glass-encased area that may be used for a restaurant directly underneath the High Line.


The plan would allow visitors to come close to the metal bones of the structure as they move up into it


The designers hope to use the areas of the High Line that are covered by buildings as rental spaces for events to generate revenue.

Plans for the city's first elevated park - a singular ribbon of green space stretching a mile and a half along an abandoned railroad viaduct 30 feet above the streets of Chelsea - have taken a major step forward with a favorable ruling by a federal transportation board.

The ruling, on Monday, essentially cleared the way for the city to begin negotiating use and development of the High Line, a weed-overgrown railroad bed that has not been used since the late 1960's and that, seen from above, looks like a painter's thick stroke of brilliant green along the gritty Lower West Side of Manhattan, between 34th Street and Gansevoort Street, in the meatpacking district.

If the plans materialize, the project would become one of only two elevated parks in the world; the other, also carved out of an abandoned railroad viaduct, is the Promenade Plantée in Paris.

"This is one of the most unique open spaces in the world," said Amanda M. Burden, chairwoman of the New York City Planning Commission and an outspoken advocate of the High Line project. "You will be able to walk 22 blocks in the city of New York without ever coming in contact with a vehicle. People will see the city from a completely unique perspective."

The project has had a long gestation, beginning in 1999, when some neighborhood residents, organized as Friends of the High Line, first intervened to block plans for demolishing the viaduct.

Property owners along the right of way, just east of the Hudson River, sought to develop their land beneath the elevated tracks.

The administration of former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani supported those efforts. But Michael R. Bloomberg, a year after taking office as mayor, reversed the city's position to support preservation.

In 2004, with the enticement of a promised $50 million city investment in the park and other incentives to satisfy local businesses, the property owners withdrew their opposition to the city's plans to develop its first midair park.

On Monday, the federal Surface Transportation Board issued the city what is called a "certificate of interim trail use." That, in effect, permits the city to remove the segment of unused rail line from the national railway grid.

Under the terms of a federal rail-preservation law, such an "interim" use could be revoked in the future should the Surface Transportation Board decide the rail line is again needed, though such revocations are rare.

"Just six years ago, saving the High Line seemed like an impossible dream, and now it's a reality," Robert Hammond, a co-founder of Friends of the High Line, said in a statement.

Along 10th Avenue yesterday, some neighborhood residents were upbeat, if somewhat cautious.

"I think it's going to be great, as long as they make it so the kids don't fall off," said Maribel Vega, 40, holding her 5-year-old son, Pedro, by the hand. "The railings are nothing, you could go right over them."

The iron railings along the viaduct - some of them plain and some with ornate Art Deco designs - would indeed be flimsy protection for 5-year-olds playing 30 feet above street level; but plans call for many improvements, not least of them in safety and security. "They better think about kids throwing stuff down on people, too," said Ms. Vega's sister, Marisol Vega, 33.

"Any green space that we can get in this neighborhood is very welcome," said Jerri Prescott, a 38-year-resident of Chelsea walking her dog on 24th Street. "Terrific."

From the street, the High Line presents itself only intermittently, a stab of rusty gunwale gray appearing at street crossings, then disappearing behind giant movie billboards, or sometimes hidden behind ivy and weed growth that drapes its railings. The line once rumbled with the traffic of freight cars, but now its presence is wistful, mainly invisible, and almost imaginary.

Public access is prohibited, and until the city negotiates terms with the owner of the line, the CSX Corporation, one can only imagine what a walk along this new boulevard might look like. But along 10th Avenue, glimpses are possible:

One will see billboards and fire escapes along some stretches, catch glimpses of crosstown traffic every block, and then, along those patches where no buildings interfere, see a river, and beyond that a lot of sky, possibly a sunset.

The next step is to negotiate a trail use agreement with the railroad, said Deputy Mayor Daniel L. Doctoroff. Gary Sease, a spokesman for CSX, said no problems were foreseen for the negotiations.

[swivel]

nice