The Spur & Coach Passage: The Final Railroad Frontier

Why is it significant?

Step out onto the broad circular plaza of The Spur at Thirtieth Street and Tenth Avenue, passing through the sheltered tunnel of the Coach Passage. You have reached the final piece of the original High Line viaduct to be opened to the public, completed in twenty nineteen.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Step out onto the broad circular plaza of The Spur at Thirtieth Street and Tenth Avenue, passing through the sheltered tunnel of the Coach Passage. You have reached the final piece of the original High Line viaduct to be opened to the public, completed in twenty nineteen.

Look around at the surrounding towering skyscrapers of Hudson Yards: you are standing above the largest private real estate development in American history, built entirely on massive steel platforms over thirty active commuter rail tracks of the Long Island Rail Road.

In the center of this plaza stands the High Line Plinth. Inspired by the Fourth Plinth in London's Trafalgar Square, this is New York's premiere dedicated site for monumental contemporary public art commissions, hosting massive works by artists like Simone Leigh and Pamela Rosenkranz that challenge history and race.

Look west where the viaduct curves toward the Hudson River around the West Side Rail Yards: in nineteen ninety-nine, Mayor Rudy Giuliani signed a demolition order to tear this entire rail line down with wrecking balls. Two neighborhood residents, Robert Hammond and Joshua David, met at a community board meeting and founded Friends of the High Line, saving this steel ribbon from oblivion. Today, it stands as an enduring global monument to the power of grassroots civic imagination.