Tom McGee's Blog

Sat­ur­day LF, her bro and myself stum­bled on an entrance to the new High Line park in Man­hat­tan. We were amazed at how well thought-out every detail of it was. It’s really an amaz­ing urban park.

The Local offers a nice story from a writer who was there at the same time, with a slide show. A lot of the pho­tos are of the great views from the park, but the park itself is glo­ri­ous too. Archi­tec­tural ele­ments echo rail­road fea­tures like the shape of a sid­ing or the place­ment of ties, the big chairs that roll on wheels along the rails, the native flow­ers and grasses along the edges and the way they blend into the walk­way, even the LED light­ing and the beau­ti­ful typog­ra­phy of the signage.

LF prob­a­bly got a lit­tle tired of me com­plain­ing that I’d left my cam­era at home. The best I’ve got is this photo of the out­door enter­tain­ment at The Stan­dard. Cookie Mon­ster is play­ing the xylophone.

It’s an easy walk from Penn Sta­tion to get on the entrance at 20^th Street between 9^th and 10^th Avenues. If you’re any­thing like us, you’ll go up think­ing you’ll walk a block or two and then go back down to street level — but you won’t and you’ll end up at the south­ern ter­mi­nus at Gan­sevoort Street wish­ing for more.