High Line
A disused elevated railway turned into a planted walkway, two kilometres long.
Duration
1 hr – 2 hrs
Best time
Early morning
Open
Every day
Entry price
Free
The High Line is an elevated freight railway, built in the 1930s to lift the trains off the street after years of fatal accidents on Tenth Avenue. The last train ran in 1980, carrying frozen turkeys.
The residents' group that saved it from demolition got it turned into a walkway, opened in sections between 2009 and 2019. The planting picks up the wild species that had colonised the tracks over twenty-five years of abandonment.
Getting there
Access at Gansevoort Street to the south, then by stairs and lifts every two or three blocks up to 34th Street. Subway lines A, C and E at 14th Street.
What to bring
- Walking shoes
- 1.5 L of water
- Cap
Rules on site
The walkway is narrow and effectively one-way at busy times: at midday on a weekend you shuffle. There is no shade over most of the route.
Other places in New York
Central ParkThree hundred and forty hectares drawn by hand in the middle of Manhattan.
Staten Island FerryA twenty-five-minute crossing that passes the Statue of Liberty.
- Brooklyn BridgeOne point eight kilometres of 1883 steel cable, crossed on foot along the upper deck.
Metropolitan Museum of ArtTwo million works, and a whole Egyptian temple rebuilt inside.