BY SCOTT STIFFLER | So much for the notion that a series runs out of ideas with each successive sequel. Set to open this fall after nearly two years of construction, the final installment of the High Line trilogy will cultivate a throwback aesthetic unlike the one offered along Sections I and II.
Although High Line at the Rail Yards (as Section III has been dubbed) will feature an additional half-mile of the same familiar walkways currently found from 14th to 30th Streets, pedestrians will be surrounded by horticulture that invokes an era of untamed beauty, when nature still claimed what would become the elevated park we know today.
As it was, so shall it be: High Line at the Rail Yards will pay tribute to the elevated park’s pre-construction look.
“Unlike the more cultivated plant beds of Sections I and II, High Line at the Rail Yards is going to feel much more wild,” says Jenny Gersten, who recently joined Friends of the High Line as their new Executive Director.
At the gates: A view from the end of Section II, at 30th Street.
“The main difference will be seen in the western section of the Rail Yards, where visitors can see the self-sewn landscape that grew after the trains stopped running in 1980. The plantings will illustrate the original found condition of the High Line.”
Much of the planking is in place, and all of the interim walkway (where the High Line curves north at the intersection of West 30th Street and 12th Avenue) is in.
Species native to New York, which have not been used before, include common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), bushclover or roundhead bushclover (Lespedeza capitata), rough dropseed (Sporobol) and early goldenrod (Solidago juncea). Sorghastrum nutans and several species of switchgrasses will also be part of the final section’s unique look.
The resulting environment will compliment the rapidly developing area just beyond the park. “When we open in the fall,” says Gersten, “it will feel like a wild piece of land, from which our visitors are going to have an incredible view of Hudson Yards as it continues its construction phase.”
