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Ye Olde High Line
March 16, 2010 | Author: Salmaan Khan | Categories: , ,

The High Line at 12th Avenue.

Most of the available photographic history of the High Line comes from the images we've been able to accumulate over the years through research and help from interested parties. Though there aren't many, these images serve as an incredible visual link to the High Line's storied past. Every new photograph provides deeper insight into the High Line's nascent days and its time spent as the "lifeline of New York."

Needless to say, when we were sent a link to these images by historian Matt Postal, we were thrilled- just try to contain your sepia-toned excitement as you browse through these photographs! They focus mainly on the Macy's Warehouse, which was located on the Northeast corner of 11th Avenue and 35th Street from 1922 until it was demolished to make way for the plaza across from the Jacob Javits center. You can see the High Line at the rail yards in many of the images, likely taken sometime in the mid to late 1930s, and scroll down for some images of the High Line under construction the first time around. Surrounded by trains, cars, construction, horse-drawn carriages and children, it's easy to imagine the need to get trains off street level. It's harder to imagine a Hershey's warehouse in midtown and fishing in the Hudson.

Have an historic image to share? Let us know! Send any photographs to info@thehighline.org (please limit emails to 3MB).

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Friday Video! 1950s Promo Video from NY Central RR
February 28, 2010 | Author: Katie Lorah | Categories: ,

nyrr_vid1 nyrr_vid2

From the Prelinger Archive, an endlessly fascinating collection of historical videos, images, and documents in the public domain, we've extracted this true gem of railroad history. It's in two parts -- a bit on the long side at nearly 28 minutes, but totally worth it. What else are you doing on a snowy Friday, anyway?

It's "Big Train," a promotional video made in the 1950s by New York Central Railroad -- which built and ran freight trains on the High Line. At this time, the rise of the commercial airline industry was eating away at rail passenger business, and the new interstate trucking system was taking business away from NYRR's freight lines. The High Line itself was seeing less and less frequent freight traffic from this time until the last train ran on it in 1980.

We can only deduce that this video was made in reaction to the beginning of the end. It highlights the cutting-edge scientific and technological advances (specially-calibrated fuel mixtures! teletype machines!) that the railroad was making to keep up-to-date amid competition from its more modern competitors.

The most fascinating part of the video to us is the impassioned monologue (at about 7:00 into the second video) by the railroad's pipe-smoking president, Alfred E. Perlman. From a speeding passenger car, Perlman urges the government to relax the Vanderbilt-era anti-trust laws that taxed railroads heavily, and reduce the enormous government subsidies that were going to the airline industry and the interstate. He strongly warns that the "lopsided transportation policies on federal and state levels" would lead to the unjust death of an industry.

Well, I guess we know how that turned out.

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Ed Devlin, Former New York Central Railroad Worker
January 08, 2010 | Author: admin | Categories:

ed devlin Ed Devlin, on his wedding day in 1950, and working at the Metropolitan Museum in 2009
 

We were recently lucky enough to speak with a former New York Central Railroad employee named Ed Devlin. Sixty years ago, Ed worked at the rail yards that fed onto the High Line when it was part of a working railroad. He was kind enough to share his memories from long before the park in the sky was ever known as the High Line.

ED: It was 1949, and I had just come out of the Marine Corps. I worked at New York Central from 1949 to 1953. My hours were 6:00 PM to 2:00 AM – devastating hours for a newlywed. Approximately once a week, I'd be sent over to the rail yards at 10th to 12th  Avenue in the west 70's. My job was just to look at the freight train as it went by.

I would stand there near a spotlight and do two things. I had to write down the name of each freight car - New York Central, Bangor & Maine, Pennsylvania Railroad, Santa Fe, etc. - and the number on the car, which had something like nine or ten digits. And even though the train was moving at maybe 8 or 9 miles an hour, it went by fast. It was tricky. I had to remember the names and numbers and write quickly.

At first I wondered why I was doing this. And then I found out that each railroad would charge the other railroads a passage fee for using their tracks. Additionally, it was important to make sure the cars were in the right order for every building scheduled for the drop. The cars' numbers related to their proper order.

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High Line Regular Tommy Flamer
December 12, 2009 | Author: admin | Categories: ,

tommy
 

Friends of the High Line staff have known neighborhood resident Tommy Flamer for a long time. Before Section 1 opened, Tommy was a fixture at all of our Rail Yards hearings, community meetings, and public programs. We would often spot him walking underneath the High Line, looking up.  Always curious and ready to chat, his excitement and friendly demeanor led to quick friendships with many of us on staff. Since the park opened, Tommy sightings on the High Line have been commonplace.

When I finally got to sit down with Tommy on a brisk December evening to ask him some questions, I found an untapped treasure chest of historical information on the High Line and the surrounding neighborhood. Tommy has lived in Chelsea since 1968, and has lived in his current home on 18th Street since 1979. As a young man he worked as a stock boy at the now defunct Valley Drugs, a pharmacy on 14th Street and 7th Avenue, and then as an elevator operator in London Terrace and at the Leo House.

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1948 Aerial Photo
November 05, 2009 | Author: admin | Categories: , ,

1948 The West Side, from about West 15th Street to West 10th Street. Courtesy Nick Jones.
 

High Line supporter Nick Jones recently sent this great aerial shot our way. He tells us it was taken in 1948, and that the aircraft  (from left to right a Stinson SR-10, Grumman Widgeon, and Grumman Goose) are all NYPD planes.

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Peter Obletz: The High Line's Original Friend
July 29, 2009 | Categories:

Peter Obletz Obletz outside his home in 1983
 

The High Line in 2009 is a story of success. After ten years of arguing, working, raising money, convincing, and building, the High Line finally opened as the civic marvel that many had dreamed it could become during its decades of disuse. However, this story of success began with a much earlier fight back in the 1970s , when a man named Peter Obletz first walked the High Line- what he referred to as a "mile and a half long cocktail sausage on toothpicks." Though Obletz ultimately failed to convince the city to reuse the High Line, his initial fight paved the way for the successes of the future.

Obletz, a former dance-company manager and train enthusiast, lived in a concrete block railroad building next door to two antique rail cars he had painstakingly restored in the late 1970s. Obletz took his first trip up to the High Line during this time and fell in love immediately. The subsequent story has been recounted many times since, from his purchase of the line from Conrail for $10, to his long and draining fight to preserve it both for commercial and public use, to his untimely death in 1996.

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Photo of the Week: Another West Side Cowboy
February 07, 2009 | Categories: ,

The much-admired West Side Cowboy, riding up 10th Avenue at 26th Street.
 
More cowboys here!

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"Cheap Lunchrooms, Tawdry Saloons and Waterfront Haberdasheries"
December 11, 2008 | Categories: , , ,

The 1930's Federal Writers Project WPA Guide to New York City, which I love, has a great description of the Hudson waterfront during the time the High Line was built. From the chapter "West Street and North (Hudson) River Waterfront":

"The broad highway, West Street and its continuations, which skirts the North River from Battery Place to Fifty-ninth Street, is, during the day, a surging mass of back-firing, horn-blowing, gear-grinding trucks and taxis. All other water-front sounds are submerged in the cacophony of the daily avalanche of freight and passengers in transit. Ships and shipping are not visible along much of West Street. South of Twenty-third Street, the river is walled by an almost unbroken line of bulkhead sheds and dock structures. North of Twenty-third Street, an occasional open spot in the bulkhead permits a glimpse of the Hudson and the Jersey Shore beyond."


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Best of the High Line Blog
June 26, 2008 | Author: Danya Sherman | Categories: , , , , , , , , , ,

The High Line is well on its way to becoming New York's first park in the sky, with plants taking root in late summer and the first section on schedule to open by the end of 2008. Keep up to date with the High Line's progress here on the Blog, written by Friends of the High Line's staff members:

Design!




Our new Design Video, produced by Brooklyn Digital Foundry, and made possible by the Trust for Architectural Easements.

Slide show of Sections 1 and 2 Design

Designing the High Line, our brand new design publication is now for sale on Amazon.com

Construction!


construction
 
Site Photography: Planking Installation

Action-Packed Construction Update

Photo of the Week: Peel-Up Benches

History!




History Video, Narrated by Ethan Hawke

Chelsea: 1986

Westbeth High Line Section

Community News!


chalk shoes
 
Chalk Shoes to the High Line


Florent: Don't Cry for Me

Field Ops to Design the Country's Largest Urban Park

Student-Run Farmer's Market at PS 11 in Chelsea

And last but not least, the High Line's favorite compatriot:

David Beckham!


beckham
 
David Beckham Bears All for the High Line, "Parts" 1 and 2

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Westbeth High Line Section
May 23, 2008 | Author: taraatthehighline | Categories: , , ,

Left, National Geographic magazine; Right, Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
 

Some of you may have seen this story in last Friday's Real Estate section of the Times. While the High Line park will begin at Gansevoort and Washington, few people know that the High Line originally went as far south as St. John's Park Terminal, which covered four riverfront blocks between Clarkson and Spring Streets. (It's now a UPS warehouse.) In the 1960's, the High Line below Gansevoort was demolished, with the exception of the little section of rail running through the Westbeth complex, on Washington between Bank and Bethune.

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