The High Line

Before this path became a public garden, it was a death trap for pedestrians. Throughout the nineteenth century, freight trains rumbled directly down the street level of Tenth Avenue, which gained a grim reputation as Death Avenue due to the hundreds of people killed in collisions. To stop the carnage, the city built this elevated steel viaduct in the nineteen thirties, lifting the trains thirty feet into the air. The tracks were designed to pass directly through the second floors of industrial warehouses and factories, allowing goods like meat and dairy to be unloaded indoors, high above the chaotic city streets.