Creator Discusses High Line Park’s Unlikely Success

“No plan. No money. No relevant experience.” That is all Robert Hammond and Joshua David started with in 1999, when they decided that the abandoned High Line railroad in New York had to be saved. On Tuesday, November 8, Hammond confessed this humble beginning at a talk he gave at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD). However, he claimed that the success of High Line Park can be attributed to his lack of a concrete plan.

“The process from imagining something to getting it done is very interesting, like how to finance it, but also just the architectural design,” said Jaclyn Sachs, a student at the GSD. Hammond took his audience through every stage of the enormous undertaking, starting with the history of the elevated railroad.

Built in 1934, the High Line transported loads of meat and other perishable food products from the Meatpacking District up Tenth Avenue to West 34th Street until it was abandoned in 1980. For the next 20 years, the High Line played host to a wide variety of New York native weeds and grasses, but little else. From the bottom, the High Line looks like an ugly overpass. One attendee at Hammond’s talk, GSD student Nick S. Hornig, said that he can remember living in New York in 1998, the year before city officials moved to demolish the High Line, and having to look at the gaunt structure. To those who lived in the neighborhood, the High Line was just a large, iron reminder that they did not live in a very nice area. To Hammond and David, however, the High Line was beautiful and had great potential—but neither had a clue what that potential could turn into.

The first thing the two “neighborhood nobodies”—as Hammond humorously referred to himself and his partner—did was to make a logo for their cause. “It gave us a feeling that we were more than we were,” Hammond said. The next step was to gain support for the project, which turned out to be the toughest part. Many residents wanted to build stores or apartments where the High Line currently stands, and it took a lot of lawyers and publicity before Hammond and David could even begin planning the future of the High Line. “You can stop anything with lawyers,” Hammond said.

“I gained more insight about the fundraising process and support gathering than I did about urban design,” Molly K. Cooney-Mesker, a student of Urban Planning at Tufts University, said of the talk. Hammond did talk a lot about mustering enthusiasm and ideas from New York City residents, public think tanks, and professional architects. He and David organized an international design competition during which they received designs for theme parks, prisons, roller coasters, and even a mile-long lap pool. For Hammond, the wide range of assistance and advice they received were a direct—and beneficial—consequence of his lack of experience or cohesive vision for the High Line.

Ultimately, Hammond and David decided that what was unique about the High Line was its historic wildness, and it is this aspect that the Park preserves so beautifully. There are simple stone planks that jut out unevenly along the path, overgrown grasses, and benches rising right out of the old railway tracks. Visitors flock to the park for that bit of green, a bird’s-eye glimpse of Tenth Avenue late at night, or the opportunity to observe fellow New Yorkers lounging and strolling. “I realized right after we opened it that there were all these people holding hands on the High Line … New Yorkers don’t hold hands. We just don’t do that outside,” Hammond said in a Technology Entertainment and Design (TED) talk earlier this year.

“To come back 10 years later to this whole transformation is really amazing. Just the ripple effect it’s had on the community,” said Hornig. Today, there are approximately 40 new construction sites along the High Line, and local businesses are only getting more customers. Even the rent on surrounding apartments is increasing significantly, though the park only opened in 2009.

Now, almost 13 years after Hammond and David met to save the historic wasteland, the High Line attracts nearly 150,000 New Yorkers every week to its meandering pathways and art installations. The “neighborhood nobody” with “no plans, no money, and no relevant experience,” left his audience with an encouraging message: Hammond hopes that what he and David have done with the High Line will inspire other regular people to get out there and do something permanent and good for their communities.