Tomorrow night at the Leo Kesting Gallery, we will fete the opening of Chalk Shoes to the High Line, a show documenting the April 16 performance led by artist Julia Mandle that featured 60 8th-graders from the Lab School in Chelsea.  The students donned shoes made from green chalk and scuffed lines along the sidewalks of the Meatpacking District and Chelsea, ending at future High Line access points.  The exhibition that opens tomorrow and runs through May 21 will feature rows of the used shoes, photographs taken by the kids, and a video of the performance by Matt Wolf.

Chalk Shoes to the High Line
Leo Kesting Gallery
812 Washington Street (near Gansevoort)
Opening: Thursday, May 15 6:00-8:00PM

Tomorrow’s opening party also kicks off Meatpacking District Design Week, happening Thursday through Sunday in venues around the Meatpacking District.  See you there!

After a last-ditch effort to get their West Side Rail Yards negotiations back on track after Thursday’s announcement, Tishman Speyer was unable to sway the MTA.

The MTA’s statement today was short and sweet. In its entirety:

The MTA met today with Tishman Speyer. Despite the best efforts of both sides, a final agreement could not be reached. The MTA has now re-entered discussions with other interested developers and remains committed to timely development of these unique and valuable parcels of land on Manhattan’s Far West Side.

It’s widely believed that the most likely developer right now is the partnership of the Durst Organization and Vornado Realty Trust.

Hudson Yards Talks Fail Yet Again [Crain's]

[The Chelsea Car Wash at West 14th Street & 10th Avenue, before the sign was taken down.] 

As many Chelsea dwellers, West Side Highway & Hudson River Park commuters, taxi drivers, and car wash enthusiasts may have noticed, the distinctive red Chelsea Car Wash sign has disappeared. It was removed from where it was attached to the High Line about a month ago with little fanfare. 

In the coming months, the Car Wash– one of the characteristic staples of the working West Side–will close its garage doors to make way for a new retail location on the corner of West 14th Street and 10th Avenue.

[Design rendering for a new retail location, courtesy of The Milk Group, who's developing the space with Robert K. Futterman.]

There’s currently no tenant booked, but in the next year or so, the Milk Group (as in Milk Studios, next door), aims to find a design, fashion, or other retail tenant for this 40,000-square-foot space directly underneath the High Line.  Renderings from their sales office show wrap-around windows in Car Wash-like glass. There’s also apparently a subterranean level for more retail.

More design renderings, and facts about the neighborhood– from the sales brochure–after the jump.

[Additional Design Renderings of 459 West 14th Street, courtesy of The Milk Group. Notice the bare High Line beams on the ceiling of the second rendering.]

From the sales brochure, DID YOU KNOW:

*  73,150 Cars pass the site daily

*  16,200 People visit the Chelsea Market, next door, every day

*  Chelsea Piers attracts over 4 Million visitors annually

Negotiations between the MTA and Tishman Speyer have collapsed, according to the MTA, following a request from the developer to change the terms under which the project would be financed, as well as the project schedule. An agreement on the 26-acre site could not be reached.

Tishman Speyer was selected to develop the rail yards last month, after an eight-month bid process. Theirs was the high bid, at $1.004 billion, beating out the only other major contender, a joint partnership between Durst and Vornado.

Tishman Speyer was reportedly apprehensive about closing on the Eastern Rail Yards before the Western Rail Yards were rezoned, a process requiring public review and City approval on several levels. A rezoning is necessary for the developer to complete its massive high-density residential and commercial plan, and adds another variable to a project already troubled with the recent loss of an anchor tenant and an exceedingly complex financing plan.

A spokesman for Tishman Speyer insisted that the developer would continue to negotiate with the MTA to see if the differences could be worked out. A meeting is set for Monday, but the MTA is reportedly considering reopening negotiations with at least one of the four other developers who originally submitted bids.

Deal to Build at Railyards on West Side Collapses [NY Times]

MTA, Tishman Speyer Call off West Side Rail Yards Wedding [Observer]

Yardsmania: MTA Dumps Tishman Speyer, Chaos Ensues [Curbed]

… And so can you! There are still a few spots remaining for the remaining Sketching the High Line classes with artist Ann DeVere.

Last Saturday was the first class, and it was a really wonderful experience. Ann led us through a series of warm-up exercises to get our creative juices flowing, and then we sat for few longer sketches, observing and recording the unique viewpoint we had of the High Line and its surroundings.

Don’t miss this great opportunity!

There are spaces available for the following dates: May 10, May 17, and May 31; click here to sign up. All classes begin at 11 am and end at 12:30 pm. These classes are identical, so registration is only permitted for one class. Members receive a discount; click here for more information about becoming a member. More photos after the jump.

[one of the five minute sketches]

[an artist and her creation]

[sketching the original art deco railing with the Hudson in the background]

[Click to enlarge]

Jonathan Flaum’s High Line series is one of our favorites. He took this shot of pigeons and the Church of the Guardian Angel in 2005, before construction on the High Line had begun.  Check out his Web site for more High Line pics.

Previous Photo of the Week

I was cleaning out photos on my cell phone and found this picture of a bird skeleton on the balast at the rail yards.

Actually, there are few pigeons, and virtually no rats or mice on the High Line. The reason? There are no people up there to feed them garbage.

The indispensable WPA Guide to New York City — a neighborhood-by-neighborhood survey from the the 1930’s Federal Writer’s Project — is one of my favorite sources of NYC nerdistry.

The chapter on Hell’s Kitchen reveals some of the colorful characters that once inhabited the area around the West Side rail yards- “a district that bears one of the most lurid reputations in America.”

It seems the New York Central Railroad– which built and operated the High Line– was largely responsible for taming the lawlessness of Hell’s Kitchen.

“Hell’s Kitchen acquired its reputation as one of the toughest areas in the city shortly after the Civil War. According to Herbert Asbury, who recorded many exploits of Hell’s Kitchen hoodlums in his book The Gangs of New York, the section deserved its notoriety. Its name, originally applied to a dive near Corlears Hook on the East Side, came from the Hell’s Kitchen Gang, organized in 1868 by Dutch Heinrichs. Although this gang specialized in raids on the Thirtieth Street yard of the Hudson River Railroad (now part of the New York Central), its repertoire included extortion, breaking-and-entering, professional mayhem, and highway robbery. It merged with the Tenth Avenue Gang, which had held up and robbed a Hudson River Railroad express train, and for decades terrorized the neighborhood. From its ranks rose the desperadoes who organized the Hudson Dusters and the Gophers.

“After the decline of the Hell’s Kitchen Gang, the Gophers achieved hegemony in the Hell’s Kitchen underworld. They made their headquarters in saloons such as one on “Battle Row” (Thirty-ninth Street between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues) operated by “Mallet” Murphy, who won his pseudonym by bludgeoning disputatious customers with a mallet. Leaders of the Gophers included “Happy Jack” Mulraney, “Goo Goo” Knox, “Stumpy” Malarkey, and “One Lung” Curran. Besides the Gophers, whose membership numbered nearly five hundred men, several smaller affiliated gangs such as the Gorillas, the Rhodes Gang, and the Parlor Mob waged consistant warfare against what was left of law and order in the neighborhood.

“Gangster rule of Hell’s Kitchen continued until 1910, when a special police force organized by the New York Central Railroad launched a counter-offensive. Clubbing, shooting, and arresting indiscriminately, they soon had most of the Gopher leadership in hospitals or behind bars and a majority of the lesser lights in flight. Remnants of the mobs functioned throughout the Prohibition era, but the backbone of Hell’s Kitchen gangsterdom had been effectively broken.”

According to Gmap Pedometer, we are moving 0.4628 miles.

We will pass under the High Line 3 times on the way.

Do YOU want to rent our old office?

Timothy Schenck, on our engineering team, has taken some beautiful site photos throughout the construction process.

More after the jump.