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Guest Essay

By Robert Hammond

Mr. Hammond was a founder of Friends of the High Line and the park’s executive director for over 20 years.

Back in the late 1990s, when Joshua David and I founded Friends of the High Line, a grass-roots organization dedicated to keeping a decrepit elevated freight railway on the west side of Manhattan from being demolished, we could never have predicted how creating a 1.45-mile-long park would also transform the gritty underpopulated industrial blocks alongside it into a bustling area that is now home to some of the flashiest real estate on the planet. Today, the High Line attracts tourists but also, contrary to what you might think, plenty of........

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