On the High Line: The Definitive Guide

The most comprehensive, up-to-date, and acclaimed guide to the High Line by the leading expert on the history of the park--now in a fully revised edition

Built atop a former freight railroad, the ＂park in the sky＂ is regularly cited as one of the premiere examples of adaptive reuse and quickly became one of New York’s most popular destinations, attracting more than 8 million visitors a year. This updated Third Edition of On the High Line-- published to coincide with the fifteenth anniversary of the park’s opening--remains the definitive guide to the park that transformed an entire neighborhood and became an inspiration to cities around the globe.

In short entries organized by roughly two city block sections, the guide provides rich details about everything in view on both sides of the park. Illustrated with more than 110 black & white photographs, it covers historic and modern architecture; plants and horticulture; and important industries and technological innovations that developed in the neighborhoods the park traverses, from book publishing and food distribution to the introduction of cold storage and the development of radar, the elevator, and talking movies. Updated to include newly opened sections of the park, this edition also features a new conversation pertaining to the more controversial side of the High Line’s story and how it became a poster child for the most grievous manifestations of gentrification and inequity in public spaces. Author Annik LaFarge provides a frank discussion on how the park’s leadership created a platform for discussing these issues and for advising other projects on how to work more inclusively and from a social justice and equity perspective.

On the High Line serves as an educated travel companion, someone invisibly perched on a visitor’s shoulder who can answer every question, including what was here before, moving back in time through the early 20th century, the Industrial Revolution, and the colonial and pre-European times when this stretch of what we call Manhattan was home to the Lenape people and much of it was covered by the waters of the Hudson River. A companion website with more than 650 photos--historic, contemporary, rooftop and aerial--can be viewed at HighLineBook.com.

Annik LaFarge is a writer, editor, photographer, and lecturer, and has been writing about the High Line since 2009, beginning with the blog LivinTheHighLine.com. In 2019 her blog was selected by the Columbia University Libraries Web Resources Collection Program for inclusion in the Avery Library Historic Preservation and Urban Planning web archive, which ensures its continuing availability to researchers. The first edition of On the High Line was published in 2012 and was the recipient of the IPPY Award for Travel Guidebook. Since 2015 she has served as a Trustee for the Waterfront Museum in Red Hook, Brooklyn, most recently as Chair. She is the author of Chasing Chopin: A Musical Journey Across Three Centuries, Four Countries, and a Half-Dozen Revolutions, published by Simon & Schuster in 2020.