High Line Blog

Yesterday, New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussof used Tishman Speyer's winning rail yards bid as an example of a problematic trend in urban development. He explains that misleading renderings are designed (or censored) to prevent public objection, so projects can slip easily through the public review process. Tishman Speyer, or course, is only one example of this, but when the MTA's announcement was made, Ouroussoff noticed,

 

This afternoon, sixty 8th-grade art students from the Lab School for Collaborative Studies donned tall, blocky shoes made of green chalk and scuffed West along the streets of Chelsea and the Meatpacking District, drawing chalk lines with their feet that ended at three future access points to the High Line.

The choreographed performance was Chalk Shoes to the High Line, a project we created with performance artist Julia Mandle, as part of our ongoing education program with the Lab School. (Today's walk was the culmination of a unit on performance art, which we certainly never learned about in middle school!)

Hopefully you caught the performance on the street today or saw the bold green chalk lines it left behind.  If not, you can check out an exhibition of the chalk shoes, as well as photos and video of the performance, at the Leo Kesting Gallery starting May 15.

More photos after the jump.

  New (and for some, suggestively shaped) concrete bollards are being installed on Ninth Avenue between Little West 12th and West 13th Street, as part of an ongoing new measure to calm traffic and make the streets of the Meatpacking District friendlier to pedestrians. The intersection has long been a kind of car-and-pedestrian free-for-all.

 

In some ways, Chelsea in 1986 in not so different from what it is today. Sure, the neighborhood has changed and evolved in many ways, but it has also remained a diverse community of people, activities, and uses. The preservation and reuse of High Line adds another interesting element to the rich history of Chelsea and when Section 1 of the High Line opens later this year, the neighborhood will evolve yet again. Photos courtesy Department of City Planning.