Standard Hotel New York

Standard Hotel New York

Standard Hotel New York and High Line Standard Hotel. High Lane Park seems to continue reorienting itself. It has amazed many the way it has transformed it and its surroundings. The new High Line Park seems to be the gift that keeps on giving. First, it converted an old railroad track into a beautiful architectural park that serves as an excellent summer retreat from the hot and muggy sidewalks. Now, it is offering up some new heat by providing some shockingly candid views into the rooms at The Standard Hotel. In 2004, the New York City government committed $50 million to establish the proposed park. On June 13, 2005, the U.S. Federal Surface Transportation Board issued a certificate of interim trail use, allowing the city to remove most of the line from the national railway system. On April 10, 2006, Mayor Michael Bloomberg presided over a ceremony that marked the beginning of construction. The project is being undertaken by New York-based landscape firm of James Corner, Field Operations, with plant-selection advice from Piet Oudolf of the Netherlands, and architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

The High Line is a 1.45-mile (2.33 km) section of the former elevated freight railroad of the West Side Line, along the lower west side of Manhattan, which has been redesigned and planted as a greenway. The High Line runs from the former 34th Street freightyard, near the Javits Convention Center, through the neighborhood of Chelsea to Gansevoort Street in the Meat Packing District of the West Village. The High Line was built in the early 1930s by the New York Central Railroad to eliminate the fatal accidents that occurred along the street-level right-of-way and to offer direct warehouse-to-freight car service that reduced pilferage for the Bell Laboratories Building (now the Westbeth Artists Community) and the Nabisco plant (now Chelsea Market), which were served from protected sidings within the structures (illustration, right)[citation needed]. It was in active use until 1980. The Standard Hotel, which towers over the newly opened High Line park, features floor-to-ceiling windows - and guests with a penchant for leaving the curtains wide open when they shouldn't.