CHELSEA — In a eight-part series of podcasts, co-founder of the Friends of the High Line describes how the idea for a public park on the abandoned railway first began, the struggles the project met with along the way and all the community members who helped it become a reality.
Joshua David takes the listener back to the civic meetings in the early 2000s when so many planners wanted to knock the rail line down.
"This thing I thought was amazing and wonderful and offered so much opportunity, everybody else in the room pretty much wanted to see it gone," he said.
Later in the narrative, David recounts how he and other planners wanted to get people to see the High Line from above, though they couldn't actually take people because of liability.
For Open House New York they let people into an shuttered meatpacking plant that he said looked like something out of "Silence of the Lambs" and had a view of the railroad from above.
"We were just amazed that that many people wanted to do it," he said. "It was the first time we realized how much the public had become excited about this concept."
You can stream or download the rest of the episodes from the High Line's website.
