New - New York City's High Line Book

I’ve written before about the High Line, that wonderful raised park that winds its way above the streets of New York City’s West Side. While browsing around Amazon.Com yesterday, I was delighted to find a new book written by the visionaries of the High Line, Joshua David and Robert Hammond.

Called, appropriately enough, High Line: The Inside Story of New York City's Park in the Sky, the book recounts how Joshua and Robert led the transformation of a derelict elevated railway into what has become a grand—and much loved—open space.

Joshua David and Robert Hammond met in 1999 at a community board meeting to consider the fate of the High Line. Built in the 1930s, it carried freight trains to the West Side of Manhattan when the area was filled with factories and warehouses. But when trains were replaced by truck transport, the High Line became obsolete. By the end of the century (the last train ran just before Thanksgiving, 1980) it was a rusty, forbidding ruin. Plants grew between the tracks, giving it a wild and striking beauty.

David and Hammond loved the ruin and saw in it an opportunity to create a new way to experience their city. In this lavishly illustrated book they tell how they relied on skill, luck, and good timing: a crucial court ruling, an inspiring design contest, the enthusiasm of Mayor Bloomberg, and the concern for urban planning issues following 9/11. Now the High Line—a half-mile expanse of plants, paths, staircases, and framed vistas—runs through a transformed West Side and reminds us that extraordinary things are possible when creative people work together for the common good.

Released only last month (October, 2011), High Line: The Inside Story of New York City's Park in the Sky has already become a top seller on Amazon, and gathered a host of glowing reviews.

“This account by the founders of the nonprofit responsible for the groundbreaking reclamation project chronicles the struggles and successes that led to the realization of what was deemed a far-fetched dream—and resulted in a new Manhattan landmark.” —Travel + Leisure

I’ve embedded this short video about the history of the High Line in a previous post, but what the heck, it’s free and the story deserves repeating, so take a look at it if you haven’t already seen it.

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“The High Line is not only a great work of design—surely the most important addition to the public realm of New York in this century; it is also a great saga. In this book Robert Hammond and Joshua David, who led the grass-roots movement to rescue the High Line from demolition, tell with energy, passion, and refreshing candor the story of how this industrial artifact became, against all odds, a magnificent park.” —Paul Goldberger

Click here to purchase High Line: The Inside Story of New York City's Park in the Sky direct from Amazon.

Details: Paperback: 352 pages Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (October 11, 2011) Language: English ISBN-10: 0374532990 ISBN-13: 978-0374532994

“The story of the High Line is one of the great encouraging improbable stories of New York life in the past few decades. This book should read by anyone who cares about New York, or green and urban life.” —Adam Gopnik