Moments from High Line

The High Line runs along a stretch of elevated freight rail line built in the 1930s to lift dangerous street-level train traffic off Manhattan's West Side, a line that fell out of use by the 1980s and sat abandoned, overtaken by wild grass and self-seeded trees, for two decades before a resident-led campaign saved it from demolition. Landscape architects James Corner Field Operations, working with architects Diller Scofidio and Renfro, opened the first section as a public park in 2009, deliberately keeping the wild, self-seeded plant character of the abandoned tracks rather than replacing it with conventional manicured landscaping.

Since opening, the park has run its own dedicated public art program, High Line Art, commissioning temporary sculpture, performance, and a rotating billboard-scale artwork visible from the park at 18th Street, so what's installed changes considerably between visits even though the park's structure stays the same. Walk it end to end if you have the time, roughly a mile and a half from Gansevoort Street to 34th Street, rather than treating it as a quick photo stop, the elevated vantage point over the streets and the Hudson River is as much the point as any individual commissioned piece along the way.