Nov
5
New York is a Mirror: Coney Island and High Line Park
November 5, 2012 | Leave a Comment
New York is a gridlocked city; it is not only congested, brimming, jammed, it is architecturally confined to its grid of streets and blocks. New York is a mirror; the glass, metal, and marble of the buildings reflects sky and sidewalk in a visual symbol of the ability of the city to represent the Zeitgeist. There is finite space for building, and an architect has control of one block at most, which forces a creative solution to the desire for architecture to reflect an interminable population with endlessly shifting cultures, styles, needs, and ideas. The city is tied to its inhabitants: each building is a monument to past, present, or future ideals of society, recreation, and culture. Coney Island and the High Line Park, although they reflect the ideals of two historically and culturally separate societies, both demonstrate the ability of New York City to unite and equalize the most diverse masses.
Coney Island became a popular haven for city-dwellers in the late 1800s, its newly developed roller coasters and rides made easily accessible by the construction of bridge and railway. Eventually developing several complex and fantastical theme parks within its borders, Coney Island reflected the desire of an urban population for recreation that would allow people to shed their Victorian morals and enjoy freedom, sensuality, and unrestricted mixing of classes and sexes. Rem Koolhaas, in his book Delirious New York, describes the link between architecture and idea: “If life in the metropolis creates loneliness and alienation, Coney Island counterattacks with the Barrels of Love,” a ride that is designed so that “it is impossible to remain standing. Men and women fall on top of each other. The unrelenting rotation of the machine fabricates synthetic intimacy between people who would never otherwise have met” (Koolhaas, 35). Not only does the construction of this ride represent the desires of a specific society for sensuality and freedom in recreation, it reflects the broader culture of New York City. Coney Island expressed ideas of artificiality, facility, and eternity inherent to the city; it offered false dreamlands, easy access to and instant gratification of desires, and an always-accessible beach lit with electricity at night: much like Manhattan, a sleepless city of dream and whim.
Created roughly a century after Coney Island, the High Line Park illustrates the consistency of certain societal values as well as changes in ideas of culture and recreation over time. Both sites separate visitors from reality and reveal the power of the city to connect people through its architecture; woman and man, rich and poor mingle in the crowds of both theme park and garden, all interacting directly with the environment and structure of the twins of city and culture. High Line Park, however, reflects the slightly different ideas and values of its own time and society: the role of the flâneur, art as a physical part of the city, and the desire for nature within an urban setting. The park was recycled from an old freight rail track and now acts as an elevated pedestrian walkway; visitors are separated from the city and yet immersed in it, as people were on the rides at Coney Island, but this anonymity allows for the existence of the flâneur described by Michel de Certeau in his book The Practice of Everyday Life rather than the sensuality of the theme parks. He describes an experience that is characteristic of the High Line Park: “His elevation transfigures him into a voyeur. It puts him at a distance. It transforms the bewitching world by which one was “possessed” into a text that lies before one’s eyes. It allows one to read it, to be a solar Eye, looking down like a god” (Certeau, 93). In this way, the park reflects the desire of modern man to observe, to reject egocentricity, and to view, objectively, the city and himself in every stage of evolution.
The park also embodies an even deeper modern impulse for the presence of the minimal beauty of nature in the city. The High Line is full of grasses, flowers, and trees and is designed with clean, simple, natural lines. Roger Scruton discusses the importance of this type of aesthetic structure in his book Beauty: A Very Short Introduction, arguing that “a tree in a garden is not like a tree in a forest or a field…it takes its place as an extension of the human world, mediating between the built environment and the world of nature,” (Scruton, 68-69). Not only are the natural elements of the High Line independently beautiful in form, their placement reflects the need of modern urban society to feel a sense of belonging and security by balancing the paradoxes existing in city life: flesh and concrete, city and nature, night and day. This harmony created by the High Line Park is only part of the reflection of the ideas and values of society; the old railway acts as a fixed “road”, uniting visitors under the same journey, direction, and purpose; the mix of people elevated above the street allows visitors to observe themselves, the city, and each other with an objective and all-seeing eye; the graffiti, architecture, and landscape allow visitors to build a more direct and sensual relationship from art outside of the confines of a museum.
In order to examine how both Coney Island and the High Line Park convey the culture and ideas of their times, I took a day trip to each area to observe, consider, and record my modern day experiences of each site. I traveled with two friends to Coney Island on a cool, sunny day. We passed shops selling phone cases, watches, beads, t-shirts, ice cream, flip-flops, lighters: disposable and harmless and fun. We took off our shoes when we got to the sand, dipped our feet in the water, watched people collecting shells or holding hands. In a moment of wildness and abandon, and a perfect demonstration of the free and sensual culture of Coney Island, all three of us swam in the ocean, wearing our underwear, surrounded by jellyfish and an occasional plastic bag or leaf of seaweed, laughing from the pureness of our childish, carefree joy and the intimacy of the sea, the crowd, and the body. After we dried off we danced to music on the boardwalk and walked towards its southern end. We saw children, people on bikes, people walking, shoeless, with shoes, long hair, dark skin, pale faces, young, old; we became flâneurs in the spirit of de Certeau, we became mixed with the poor and rich in the spirit of Coney Island, we bought hot dogs and watched people ride roller coasters.
Walking through the High Line Park created a similar feeling of being an flâneur, although it resulted in a very different experience of environment, culture, and recreation. I walked through streams of people, absorbing the buildings, the light, the color, the trees, the streets. Elevated above the cars and pedestrians below, I was in a position of seeing all and being seen by all in the evaluation of the city and self caused by the structure of the High Line Park. The walk was modern, surrounded by graffiti and architecture, and involved an overwhelming sense of progress, movement, and the present; the old railroad tracks recycled into a park, the old building transformed into an art gallery, the old warehouse turned into a clothing store. The High Line communicates the need of the city to constantly re-build itself within the confines of a pre-existing structure and the nature of our current society to value temporality, innovation, and trends; in the sleepless city, everything is re-born each day, graffiti is painted over and replaced with more graffiti, nature is molded to our notions of our city and ourselves, we swim, uncovered, in the freedom of the oceans womb, and return to the motion of urban life.
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