Friends of the High Line and New York City selected the core design team to turn the unused elevated rail line into a public park. The team combined landscape architecture (James Corner Field Operations) with architecture and urban design (Diller Scofidio + Renfro), setting the project’s signature approach of blending planting, pathways, and industrial remnants.
A preliminary proposal for the High Line was publicly presented in a Museum of Modern Art exhibition. This helped translate an advocacy-driven idea into a concrete design direction, building broader support and visibility for an elevated park as a new kind of public space.
New York City Council approved the West Chelsea rezoning plan centered on preserving the High Line and converting it into open space. The action reshaped development rules in the surrounding area, linking the park’s future to nearby real estate, galleries, and street-level improvements.
The City of New York took ownership of the High Line structure from CSX Transportation, helping secure the rail viaduct for public reuse instead of demolition. This legal and property milestone made it possible to move from planning into full-scale construction and long-term public management.
City planning actions refined the Special West Chelsea District rules that governed development and the High Line’s improvement area. These adjustments clarified boundaries and responsibilities, supporting the project’s build-out and ongoing maintenance framework.
A formal groundbreaking marked the start of major work to transform the rail structure into a park. Early construction focused on removing debris, repairing the structure, and preparing the deck for the new path-and-planting system that would define the High Line’s design.
The first public segment opened, creating an elevated park from Gansevoort Street to West 20th Street. Its design established the High Line’s recognizable “tracks-in-the-landscape” idea, where original rails remain visible and planting is integrated with walking routes and seating.
The second section opened, extending the park north through Chelsea to West 30th Street and substantially increasing its length and capacity. This phase reinforced the project’s strategy of building in stages and helped connect the park to new development and cultural destinations along its edges.
Work began on the third phase, which would curve around active rail yards and extend toward West 34th Street. This stage required careful coordination with surrounding infrastructure and development plans, showing how the High Line’s design had to adapt to complex urban conditions.
The third section opened to the public, extending the elevated route to West 34th Street near the Javits Center. Its design emphasized a more rugged, self-seeded landscape character in places, reflecting how nature had colonized the abandoned tracks during decades of disuse.
The High Line’s Spur opened as the project’s last major extension, creating an eastward branch near 30th Street and 10th Avenue. It also introduced the High Line Plinth, a dedicated platform for large-scale public art, expanding the park’s role as both landscape and cultural infrastructure.
By completing the main line and its final extension, the High Line demonstrated how a disused industrial structure could be redesigned into a major public space through phased construction. The project became widely studied in contemporary architecture and landscape architecture for its adaptive reuse approach and its strong influence on surrounding neighborhood change.
The High Line, New York: Design, Construction and Extension (2006–2019)