At the southern entrance of the High Line you meet the elevated freight railroad where it begins its 1.45-mile journey north through the Meatpacking District, Chelsea, and Hell's Kitchen. This end of the park sits directly above the Meatpacking District, named for the packing houses and slaughterhouses that occupied this neighborhood from the 1880s through the 1990s. At its peak, the district contained dozens of slaughterhouses, and the smell and the blood on the cobblestones were the realities of feeding a city.
By the early 2000s, only a handful of packing houses remained; the rest of the neighborhood had transformed into one of New York's most fashionable restaurant and nightlife districts. The High Line itself was designed by landscape architects James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio and Renfro, with planting designs by Dutch landscape designer Piet Oudolf, whose approach to naturalistic, seasonal planting became enormously influential. The wild plants that grew on the abandoned tracks during its twenty years of disuse inspired the final design.
Walk north and notice the streets and buildings falling away below your feet; from up here, the city looks like a model of itself.