In one bound New York City is springing into place with enormous strides. In fact a pedestrian is just a few short strides away from doing a proper jaunt or hike right through the heart of the Big Apple on Manhattan’s long awaited western spur of the elevated High Line Park. The new length of the elevated park — at 2.3 miles long, or 3.7 kilometers — is about double that of the Hudson River waterfront greenery that has become a beloved landmark since it opened in 2009. The newest iteration, called the Hudson Yards Spur, opened to the public on Thursday. It is the first extension of the High Line and serves as a sort of walking and sitting ribbon that connects the neighborhood of Hudson Yards — which you can picture as being just to the west of the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood — to the Chelsea neighborhood on the opposite side of the cheeky little extension.
The High Line has gotten New Yorkers and tourists to see their city in a whole new light, quite literally. The elevated park, built on a former elevated freight railway line on Manhattan’s West Side, winds along, offering new perspectives on the architecture and buildings of the city’s core. It is a place for people to walk their dogs, to go for a jog, to take visitors and to basically just chill out. William Saunders, the co-founder and former president of the nonprofit that maintains the High Line, has said that creating it was a way of .
