[2]Photo by Brian Finke

The "Goings on About Town" photo in this week's New Yorker featured a familiar sight to anyone who's strolled the High Line on a hot day.  The Sundeck's lounge chairs – both rolling and stationary – have become a veritable Mecca for sunbathers.

For those who remember the early iterations of the High Line's design, the photo also reminds us of something...

[3]Photo courtesy the City of New York.

This was one of the first renderings of the Sundeck. Note the early conception of the water feature as a deeper, narrower channel, the longer, lower lounge chairs, and their placement on the western, not the eastern, edge of the Sundeck. This rendering was never released, as the Sundeck concept soon began to take a form more like its current one.

Some things, though, have not changed. Front and center, the bikini-clad babe-rendering serves as a harbinger of sunbathers to come.