One High Line Park Opens on 10th Avenue

By Brian J. Pape, AIA

The new One High Line Park looking north from the 17th Street overlook shows the unusual features incorporated within the design. The Faena Hotel windows form the building wall on the left under the High Line, up to the billboard that partly hides the new staircase up to the High Line, and the Lantern House apartments behind it. Note the large curbside tree beds that create an almost a continuous wall next to the bike lane. Credit: Brian J. Pape, AIA.

One High Line, a twisting 36- and 26-story residential and hotel development at 500 West 18th Street, alternately addressed as 76 Eleventh Avenue in Chelsea, has had a twisting history of its own.

HFZ Capital Group (HFZ) first acquired the trapezoidal full-block plot, which straddles the High Line between 17th and 18th streets, and 10th and 11th avenues, for $870 million from Edison Properties in May 2015, one of the highest prices ever paid in Manhattan for a development site. The towers were designed by Bjarke Ingels Group with Woods Bagot as architect of record for HFZ, and construction framing topped out in 2019. After construction ground to a halt, in 2023 the Witkoff Group and Access Industries took over the development to complete around 900,000 square feet floor area with 236 condominium units in one – to five-bedroom layouts, 137 hotel rooms, and 90,000 square feet of retail and amenity spaces. Construction is now nearing completion. The Faena Hotel in the shorter 26-story tower is expected to open later this year (not to be confused with the High Line Hotel at the General Theological Seminary at 180 Tenth Avenue), and its windows face the new park with decals vividly announcing the future amenity.

Now we will have to distinguish between the new landscaped public plaza called One High Line Park and The High Line (also called High Line Park on the viaduct). Perhaps it would have been less confusing if it had been called One High Line Plaza? Until last year, the area to the east of the High Line and the One High Line towers was a non-accessible wasteland, with a large utility vault being constructed under the mammoth billboard along 18th Street. The temporary staircase along West 17th Street and scaffolding along the High Line have now been dismantled. A new public staircase leading up to the High Line has been built at the base of the billboard structure along West 18th Street.

As reported by Michael Young and Matt Pruznick on September 13, 2025 in the YIMBY NY blog, the park was designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Field Operations, for a private-public partnership between One High Line, the City of New York and Friends of the High Line.

Although most of the plaza has been paved with concrete over the various vaulted spaces below, there are generous and numerous curving and angular wooden benches backing up to several landscaped mounds. In combination with the enormous tree beds along the curb of Tenth Avenue, there seems to be enough shade to provide a welcoming spot for lunches and resting, if you don’t mind the staring and flashes of tourist cameras above you at all times.

There have been many snide comments on social media about how awful it is to have that huge billboard at 18th Street for the entire width of that end of the park; it blocks much of the view of the Lantern House apartments across 18th Street, which is probably not such a bad thing, except for those in windows facing the back of the billboard.

Although it looks like a billboard, it’s as large as a highway billboard, and the displays seem to be commercial advertising, this is actually an art project by the High Line organization. This current display until next year, entitled 1-555-DIVORCE, by artist Roe Ethridge of Miami, comes with tongue-in-cheek comments on a display along the walkway: “in a world where farce and reality have blurred into one,” the DIVO is matched with the beautiful DIVA holding a lawyer mug. The billboard advertises nothing but the artist’s expression.

The High Line, the park, and even the billboard are easier to enjoy now that the scaffolding has come down. Check it out.