The High Line's Next Balancing Act

When Robert Hammond first conceived of turning a disused elevated railway on Manhattan’s West Side into a high-design “linear park,” he thought it would attract maybe 300,000 visitors a year. He and co-founder Joshua David didn’t really think about what the High Line could do to the neighborhood, apart from adding a little extra breathing room.

“This was right after 9/11,” Hammond says almost two decades later, sitting in his glassy office perched above the now-famous planked pathway. On a February afternoon, walkers are admiring views of the Hudson River and park greenery hushed grey by winter. “People were worried about buildings falling apart, and whether the stock exchange would leave town,” he says. “New York’s future was not guaranteed.”