The Highline Boardwalk

Before this boardwalk became a destination for millions, the area below was known as Death Avenue. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, freight trains rumbled directly along the street level of Manhattan to deliver goods to factories. The resulting collisions between these heavy trains and pedestrians were so frequent that the city eventually hired men on horseback, known as West Side Cowboys, to ride in front of the locomotives and wave red flags to warn the public of approaching danger.