A derelict mass of rusty iron and reinforced concrete; a vestige of a bygone era that tore through the West Side of Manhattan; a grim and gritty canopy, sheltering blood-soaked meat packers and transgender prostitutes. Back in 1990, the raised tracks of the High Line, which until 1980 had freighted factory goods between 34th street and Chelsea and Soho downtown did not seem to me like the natural place for a park.
Unknown to even the most inquisitive New Yorker, this 1½-mile stretch of abandoned elevated railway had become a secret garden in the sky - a home to saplings, wild grasses and monarch butterflies. Now, two decades on, the whole city is in the know: that hunk of junk is about to become a park.
Climbing stairs to its rail bed reveals manic planting and construction. There are six weeks to go before the High Line Park opens to the public in early June: paths are being put down, benches installed, old rails re-laid and silver birches, hazelnut trees and cherry blossoms beginning to bud. Grasses, wild petunias and pine trees sway in the breeze. The silver mirror of the Hudson river is to my left, the Manhattan skyline to my right.
I'm at the Gansevoort Woodland, the park's southern terminus, where dense vegetation transports me from the urban life of the stylish Meatpacking District below. Instead of Diane von Furstenberg dresses, I'm surrounded by raised terraced beds of flowers.
Below the woodland, at the cross roads of Gansevoort and Washington Streets, is Gansevoort Plaza, one of the High Line's main entrances, which will be partly enclosed in glass. Steel steps, spanning almost half a block, rise gradually to the walkway - the designers call them "slow stairs". As I climb, I'm up against the line's metal bones, its rivets and beams. From here, the view is north: through trees to the Gansevoort Grasslands, the Standard Hotel astride the line and a serene river of green, reds and yellows flowing towards Chelsea.
It is a far cry from the grim West Side of the 1800s: the mass of warehouses and factories, dissected by Tenth Avenue and dangerous street-level trains. They hit pedestrians so often that the thoroughfare was rechristened Death Avenue. The High Line opened in 1934, but almost immediately the Great Depression and the truck did for it. By the 1950s it was being usurped. By the 60s hardly used. The last train ran in 1980: rather aptly, three boxcars of frozen turkeys.
After that the line went native. It was viewed by many, especially local property developers, as an impediment to regeneration. In 1999 mayor Rudy Giuliani approved its destruction.
That was when "neighbourhood nobodies" Robert Hammond and Joshua David formed Friends of the High Line to fight to save the bucolic self-sown landscape. They galvanised local residents, businesses, socialites and celebrities such as Edward Norton, Kevin Bacon and the designer Diane von Furstenberg. "They had a wonderful idea - a park weaving through the city like a green ribbon," says von Furstenberg. "The choice was to rip it out and be left with a huge pile of junk, or fill it with plants and trees and make it beautiful," says Bacon.
Eventually, they persuaded new mayor, Michael Bloomberg to stop the demolition. Ten years on, the first phase of the $170million public-privately funded project, from Gansevoort to 20th Street, is about to be completed.
Architects and landscapers have aimed to keep the essence of the secret garden discovered by Hammond and David: the tough industrial structure juxtaposed against a verdant meadow on top. It is about melancholic beauty, contemplation, a futuristic refuge.
It is organic and architectural. Quite different to the more commercial, conventionally pretty elevated rail viaduct park Promenade Plantée in Paris. It is a wild, low maintenance environment, a curvi-linear boardwalk that will flow for 22 blocks through woodlands, grasslands, sundecks, art installations, public squares and performance spaces. In essence, be the cultural anchor of the neighbourhood. It is perhaps fitting then, that the Whitney Museum's Downtown will be the High Line's bookend.
When completed in 2012, the museum, designed by Renzo Piano, will be a bold chiselled form with terraces and sculpture gardens. It is already regarded as a new Manhattan icon - one of many buildings sprouting up around the High Line.
As I walk that way, woodland turns into the Washington Grasslands, with beds of goat's beard, anemone and june grass. This is the widest point of the line: 60ft. The path of concrete planks, designed to resemble sleepers with grass stalks shooting up through the gaps, has old railway tracks on either side. Benches look east to Greenwich Village and there are original, ornate, art deco guardrails.
Soon I come to the monolith that is the newly opened Standard hotel: a 20-storey edifice above the High Line. Huge concrete pillars hoist the Le Corbusier-style glass slab building 56ft over the street and 30ft from the rail bed. It resembles an open book on its end with two enormous pages of glass.
After more grassland, I duck under the construction of the High Line Building, an old sausage factory that is being turned into a glass office tower.
Walking on, the line splits into two levels. The lower is a preserve of more wild grass and flowers, the upper a sundeck and water feature with amazing views of the Hudson and New Jersey, and huge benches and loungers. Some are U-shaped; others slide along the rails on wheels. I imagine the scramble for them when the park opens every morning; perhaps its ugliest feature.
The water feature runs half the length of the deck, betrayed by a thin strip of dwarf bulrushes, galingales and Siberian irises behind H2O bubbling up through cracks between the concrete planks. You can walk through this barefoot or sit on benches in the water.
Beyond is the Chelsea Market Passage, where the High Line cuts through the old Nabisco factory - the site of the park's public art programme. Its inaugural work is being installed as I pass: The River That Flows Both Ways by Spencer Finch, with individual panes of glass replicating the Hudson's different colours. This space will also host lectures and small performances.
On the other side of the passage, I come to the Tenth Avenue Square which will be a wooden-decked elevated space, peppered with trees, at the point the High Line crosses Tenth Avenue at 17th Street. Part of the deck is suspended over the avenueto form seating with a dramatic vista north.
Between 18th and 20th streets, the park narrows to a grassy pedestrian space; like the rest of the High Line bicycling and rollerblading aren't allowed. Below, I look out on a parking lot that within a year will be a large square - the 18th Street Plaza.
The High Line is designed to slow us down, make us stop and think, appreciate the views of the Hudson, the warehouses and the New York icons: the Empire State Building, London Terrace and new signature architecture around the park including Frank Gehry's white galleon, the IAC building, and Jean Nouvel's 21-storey tower with its green glass curtain wall comprising nearly 1,700 panes.
And that brings us to the end of the park's first section. The second phase will open next year and include a plaza, thicket, lawns, wildflower fields, a canopy walkway and a cut out glass floor exposing the structural framework of the High Line.
This first section has been dubbed a magical flying carpet and an Alice through the keyhole landscape. It is understandable then, when Hammond confesses: "It is a relatively small park. One of my concerns is it being loved to death in the first few weeks."
Loved, yes. But with a little tender care the High Line Park will have a much longer life than its predecessor the High Line railroad.
• Virgin Atlantic (0870 380 2007, virgin-atlantic.com) flies to New York from Heathrow and Gatwick from £286 rtn inc tax (special offer available until 30 April). The Standard (001 212 645 4646, standardhotels.com), owned by Andre Balazs, has doubles from £135. thehighline.org.
Urban outfitters: More reclaimed city spaces
Paris
New York's High Line follows in esteemed footsteps. The Promenade Plantée was the world's first elevated parkway, following a 19th-century railway viaduct from the Opéra Bastille to the eastern city limits. Abandoned in the late 60s, the green ribbon of cherry trees, maples, limes and lavender sneaks alongside the second-stories of grand Hausmanian mansions and ivy-draped, city-centre tunnels. Naturally, it comes with an artsy twist - a series of arcades in the viaduct arches have been transformed into workshops, where artisans restore antique furniture, and make violins, jewellery and crafts. The most famous arcade features the Atelier Camille Le Tallec, whose hand-crafted porcelain rose to global fame when it was showcased in Tiffany's stores.
Valencia
The river Turia used to be the scourge of Valencia, today it is its pride and joy. Historically the Turia was prone to flooding and after one disastrous flood too many in 1957 it was diverted to the edge of the city, leaving the riverbed empty. The trench lay idle for over two decades (at one stage it was almost turned into a car park) before it was developed into a 9km-long park, twisting around the north and east of the city centre, and is home to a lagoon, gardens, playing fields, cycle paths and Gulliver, a fantastic playground where children can clamber over and slide down the sleeping giant. As a reminder of the park's history, the old stone river bridges still cross it at regular intervals. Its most striking feature, however, is the breathtakingly ambitious City of Arts and Sciences (cac.es), the complex of futuristic white concrete, mosaic and glass structures designed by local architect Santiago Calatrava. The Science Museum, Imax cinema, planetarium, and the spaceship-like Palau de les Arts (lesarts.com) soar out of pale blue pools. At present the park ends at the aquarium, but the plan is to extend it all the way to the port, which was also rejuvenated when Valencia hosted the America's Cup in 2007, so you'll be able to walk or cycle from the city centre all the way to the beach via this unique green space.
The Ruhr
Many of the collieries, coking plants and foundries of the Ruhr in western Germany, once Europe's largest industrial heartlands, have been reborn as a string of cultural centres that form the Industrial Heritage Trail. The popularity of the venues has contributed to Essen, representing the district, being named European Capital of Culture in 2010. It's not hard to see why - the range of renovation is staggering. Essen's Zeche Zollverein XII colliery now houses an art gallery and ice-skating rink in the former coking plant, a gas tank at the Landschaftspark industrial park has been turned into the largest artificial scuba-diving centre in Europe, and a water tower in Mülheim has been recreated as an award-winning museum featuring over 14 levels of interactive exhibits.
• For more information on the Industrial Heritage Trail: tinyurl.com/ruhrtrail.
Dresden
The Germans, it seems, are very good at this sort of thing. When Dresden's new Terminal 2 building was unveiled in 2001, the old Terminal 1 complex fell into disuse, exhausted after 65 years of employment as a Luftwaffe arsenal, Red Army training school and international airport. A number of local promoters started throwing parties in the old building, and eight years later the Terminal 1 club is one of Saxony's biggest nightclubs. So as flights take off from neighbouring runways, the party people next door are bouncing up and down in Terminal 1's waiting hall, now the main dance floor of the techno-focussed club. If techno isn't your thing, there's hip hop and R&B in the baggage car garage, trance music in the luggage hall, or the "Ibiza Lounge" in the former airport restaurant.
• terminal1.de.
Beijing
In 1949, the year that Chairman Mao declared China a People's Republic, the Beijing Machinery and Electric Institute opened a factory and research facility in the industrial suburb of Sanlitun. Fast forward 60 years, and the vast red-brick complex has been recently reopened as the city's most talked-about arts and dining hub. Re-named as 1949-The Hidden City, the complex has retained the lofty ceilings and exposed brickwork of the long-idle industrial giant, and has squeezed in a handful of restaurants and bars, a private members' club, an art gallery and a 55,000sq-ft courtyard and garden. The opening follows in the footsteps of another revamped industrial area - the cluster of contemporary art galleries and studios at the 798 Dashanzi Art District that has taken the art world by storm over the past decade.
• elite-concepts.com, 798art.org.
Benji Lanyado
