The 23rd Street Lawn & Chelsea Art District: The Green Meadow

Why is it significant?

Step onto the open wooden sundeck beside the elevated Kentucky bluegrass meadow at Twenty-Third Street.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Step onto the open wooden sundeck beside the elevated Kentucky bluegrass meadow at Twenty-Third Street. This lush lawn, cantilevering dramatically over the west side of the viaduct, is the only patch of open green turf on the entire High Line where visitors can kick off their shoes and sit directly on the grass.

What makes this neighborhood below so legendary in global culture? You are floating directly above West Chelsea, the uncontested art capital of the world. In the nineteen nineties, as rent soared in SoHo, world-class art dealers and gallerists like Larry Gagosian, David Zwirner, and Hauser and Wirth took over the vast column-free garages and former taxi depots along Twentieth through Twenty-Sixth Streets.

Today, over three hundred contemporary art galleries cluster within five blocks of this lawn. The High Line itself acts as an open-air museum, curating rotating monumental outdoor sculptures, billboards, and audio installations that dialogue with the brick facades and luxury penthouses.

Look north towards the sculptural glass ribbons of Zaha Hadid's residential building at Twenty-Eighth Street: its seamless hand-rubbed stainless steel curves wrap around the park like liquid silver. Here, the raw steel history of New York's rail past meets the highest architectural luxury of the twenty-first century.