Evening Falls Over Jean Nouvel’s 100 Eleventh Ave Luxury Condo (L) with Frank Gehry’s IAC Building (R) | Photo by Tony Sargent (C) 2013
The area along the 10th Avenue corridor from 16th Street to 30th Street is fast becoming Manhattan’s newest luxury residential neighborhood. Renaming it “The High Line District” instead of the generic “West Chelsea” will best capture the district’s new and exciting eclectic nature and architectural significance.
Already featuring a mix of boutique condos, long-established art galleries, and distinctive architecture designed by such luminaries as Jean Nouvel, Frank Gehry, Annabelle Selldorf and Shigeru Ban, now new developments of uber luxury residential condos are coming to the area including modern designs by Thomas Juul-Hansen, Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid and other prominent architects. These projects are being developed by HFZ Capital, the Related Companies, Cary Tamarkin and others to create an exclusive new neighborhood deserving of new recognition.
As I’ve also shared with prospective buyers of my gorgeous luxury penthouse listing at 444 West 19th Street this month, the area’s values are rising fast and the modernist luxury developments that are planned will all be priced between $2,500 to $3,500 a square foot as confirmed by C.J. Hughes’ recent New York Times article on the district’s transformation. Standing on the terrace of Penthouse 2, one has the most unique perspective and unobstructed 180-degree views over the area.
Anchoring the southern entry to the High Line, the Whitney Museum has taken form and will be opening to the public in 2015. Meandering from the new Whitney at Gansevoort Street to Hudson Yards at 30th Street (the future home of the Culture Shed) without the rush or screeching of cars, trucks, or blinking lights of cross walks, the High Line provides a unique and peaceful urban green-space experience.
The High Line opened in 2009 and was extended above 21st Street in 2012. This green ribbon, which once was slated to be demolished until it was saved by the vision and advocacy of The Friends of the High Line, a non-profit founded by neighborhood residents Joshua David and Robert Hammond, is the foundation of this new neighborhood and its “raison d’etre”.
If you are looking for a long-term real estate investment opportunity, the High Line District and the areas around it will deliver.
So the highline is jam packed. So I would not refer to it as a park, but rather a beautiful elevated pedestrian walkway. I though it was packed and Hudson yards is still a construction zone… It is going to be nuts once Hudson Yards is up and running.
NYC should consider building elevated walkways in most of most midtown. For one it would create 2nd or 3rd floor retail opportunities, second it would be safer, third it would improve traffic flow for cars and buses and lastly it would be cool and yet another thing to make NYC unique.
I was walking in the High Line district last Sunday morning. I looked into the window of the Gladstone Gallery and saw this large ‘odd looking’ installation. I walked in, and began viewing when someone came out from the back room and told me the gallery is closed: but I was welcome to stay and look at the piece.
In effect, this was for me a private and exclusive showing of this work; this sculpture it is both Cryptic and Fantastic.
This show is somehow fascinating to me; it is visually compelling and seems loaded with implied meaning, and commentary on our current society.
A quote here from the author - Said Demircan
“Blasting mats, for those unfamiliar, are heavy-duty mats stitched together from pieces of car tire, devised to catch flyrock from controlled explosions. Fifteen years ago, Richard Prince started making work from disused blasting mats, suspending them from customized frames at his studio in Rensselaerville. A trio of these sculptures, Untitled (Blasting Mats) (2006) are transposed to a gallery for the first time. They hang, slumped and heavy, from metal I-beams, structures with unforgiving, murderous associations.”
See, the High Line did a great job of injecting needed green space in an otherwise hostile urban environment which lacked any real options. It helped transform one of the most blighted segments of New York into the city’s next great international destination seemingly overnight. Their case was strong for the claim, and they got it!
Then that poses the opposing question; Is there a condition in which there would be too much green space in an urban environment? There is. Case in point; Little Island by Thomas Heatherwick himself. Stuck in the middle of the Hudson River with millions of dollars just poured down the drain for something with little actual innovation! Cool lunch spot tho!
What New York needs right now are more brownstone blocks and 4-5 story walk-up end caps, not to mention a few more expressways to get cars through the highest-density parts of town, but to also get them through those parts out of sight and out of mind. Also, build a new community garden every so often as well. You’re gonna need it!
Hell yeah, thanks for these progress shots, JB! I didn’t realize it was this far along. I’ll be really curious to see what the connection point between the current High Line spur and this new extension looks like. A meeting of two very different architectural styles.
In these renders from SOM, it just seems like a small portion of the existing railing of the Spur will be removed in the right angled section of the platform and the new extension will connect to it.
