The High Line
A mile and a half of disused elevated freight rail turned into a planted walkway thirty feet above the West Side — free, brilliant, and unbearable at midday in summer.
- What it costs
- Free.
- Best in
- Spring, Summer, Fall
- Where
- Gansevoort Street to West 34th Street, New York, NY 10011
- Official site
- thehighline.org
Timing is everything here
The High Line is narrow. On a sunny Saturday afternoon it is a single-file shuffle with no shade and nowhere to step aside.
Go before 10am or after 6pm. Early morning is genuinely lovely — planting still wet, low light down the avenues, almost nobody on it. Evening gives you sunset over the Hudson.
It takes about 45 minutes end to end without stopping, closer to 90 if you actually look at things.
What to notice
The planting is by Piet Oudolf and is designed to be best in late summer and autumn, when most gardens are past it — seed heads, grasses, structure rather than flowers. It is not a flower garden and it isn't trying to be.
The original rails are left embedded in the deck in places. The 10th Avenue Square at 17th Street is a sunken amphitheatre with a glass wall looking straight down the avenue at traffic — the single best-designed moment on the park.
What's at either end
South: the Whitney Museum at Gansevoort, and the Meatpacking District. Chelsea Market is a block off the line at 15th Street — a food hall in a former Nabisco factory, very good and very crowded.
Little Island is a short walk west at Pier 55 — a public park on concrete tulips in the Hudson, free, though it can require timed entry at busy periods.
North: Hudson Yards, the shops, and the Vessel. Also Bella Abzug Park and the westernmost stretch, the Spur, with its rotating public sculpture.
Getting there
Southern end: the A, C, E or L to 14th Street–Eighth Avenue, then walk west to Gansevoort Street.
Northern end: the 7 to Hudson Yards, which puts you at the 34th Street entrance.
Middle: the C or E to 23rd Street.
Walk south to north — it ends at Hudson Yards where there's food, shops and a subway, rather than dumping you in the Meatpacking District.
Getting around once you're there
**Lifts at Gansevoort, 14th, 16th, 23rd, 30th and 34th Streets**, so the whole park is reachable step-free — but lifts do go out of service, and the High Line's own site posts current status. Check it before you commit if a lift is essential. The deck itself is flat and smooth throughout.
Nearby
In these guides
- One day in Manhattan without the tourist traps
- Free things to do in New York City
- Free things to do in Manhattan
- Chelsea: the High Line, two hundred free galleries and the West Village below
- New York in spring: what's actually good in March, April and May
- New York in fall: the best season, and what to do with it