Like our own personalities, urban identities evolve over time but risk snapping if pushed too far. The High Line—an elevated rail that snakes through Manhattan’s Meatpacking District and Chelsea, sidling up to some old buildings and slicing through others—has stamped its ever-changing character on its environs for 75 years. Opened in 1934 as a freight line bringing sides of beef and cases of milk to warehouses on the city’s west side, it morphed from a symbol of progress to a white elephant to a noirish backdrop for late-night assignations with hookers and drug dealers. Over the years, the hulking metal viaduct had attracted people who loved it—such as Robert Hammond and Joshua David, who founded Friends of the High Line to spearhead efforts to save it—and others who hated it as an eyesore, a magnet for illicit activities, and an impediment to new development. So when James Corner Field Operations (JCFO) and Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R) won the job to transform the abandoned High Line into an elevated urban park in 2004, the two firms needed to craft yet another identity for the 1.5-mile-long behemoth without stretching it too far from its past.
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