It simply adds to the over-congestion of Midtown Manhattan if you ask me, but nothing I say is going to stop it...there is too much money to be made in this scheme.
How NYC's Newest Neighborhood Will Float Above an Active Train Yard
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In
Manhattan this spring, crews are ramping up work on Hudson Yards, the
largest private development in US history. But what's fascinating about
this new mega-development aren't just its buildings. It's the fact that
they will float above an existing train depot on a massive artificial
foundation. We got an early look at how it's being built.
First, a
little back story. West Side Yard, a sunken rail yard wedged above the
High Line and two blocks away from Penn Station, is a critical nerve
center in NYC's transit system: A 26-acre depot that serves overflow
Long Island Railroad trains during rush hour, with 30 tracks and space
for storage and maintenance, too. It's so important that it's been
spared from the rush to redevelop the West Side in the wake of the High
Line—though that's not to say its creators didn't foresee it.
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When the
rail yard opened in the 1980s, its engineers were already imagining the
day when a hungry developer would pave over it. So they left a small gap
that runs around the edges of the yard—just enough space for structural
members to be laid down without interrupting traffic. Think of it as an
insurance plan for future city-builders.
Now, those
builders have arrived—and they're building something far bigger than the
planners of the 1980s probably ever imagined: Hudson Yards, a
tightly-packed puzzle of four skyscrapers and a cadre of other towers
that represent the largest private development project in the entire
history of the US, and the largest development in NYC since Rockefeller
Center.
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It will add
an entire new neighborhood to Manhattan—65,000 people will live or work
here—and all of it, from offices to schools to streets, will rest on
the super-strong platform that's now being built over the rail yards.
A Bridge That Holds Up a Neighborhood
Building
this platform, let alone the buildings themselves, will require a
Jenga-esque succession of tactical construction stages—in part because
the rail yard will continue to function as the massive new neighborhood
rises above it. Related Companies, the developer of the project,
explains the structure with this graphic:
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But let's
take it in steps. To begin with, crews will drill 300
caissons—essentially, large column-like pipes—into the bedrock below the
tracks, filling them with concrete:
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Builders
have been doing this in NYC for ages—just look at the Brooklyn Bridge. A
century later, this feat will be just as complicated: Because trains
will continue to run through the yard, crews will sink the caissons in
sections, avoiding the moving trains, drilling as deep at 80 feet into
the bedrock below the West Side.
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Once the
caissons are in place, work will begin on a massively heavy, incredibly
strong platform—a foundation perched on columns. This work will go
piece-by-piece too, all to ensure the safety of the train drivers and
the construction crews both:
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But the
most difficult bit will come at the narrow neck of the rail yard. Here,
the trains form a dense thicket of activity, and there's no room for
massive caissons. Instead, crews will built a series of trusses across
the rail yard:
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Then—then!—come
the buildings. Skyscrapers, apartment complexes, restaurants, a public
school. Some 17 million square feet of office and residential spaces. 14
acres of public land. Hotels, shops, a theater. All that and more will
sit perched on what amounts to a bridge—a bridge that supports thousands
of people and no fewer than three skyscrapers.
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By the time
the platform is complete, workers will have installed 25,000 tons of
steel (more than half of the Williamsburg Bridge) and 14,000 cubic yards
of concrete. It will weigh more than 35,000 tons. For comparison's
sake, the bridge portion of the Brooklyn Bridge weighs around 14,680
tons.
A New Generation of NYC Megastructures
The
architect of some of the first skyscrapers in the world, Daniel Burnham,
once said "make no little plans, they have no magic to stir men's blood
and probably themselves will not be realized." In other words, small
ideas don't get anyone excited enough to see them through to completion.
It's a good
way to describe Hudson Yards, a cornucopia of pricey real estate that
will be so vastly lucrative that it justifies one of the largest
structures ever built in New York. Some may see it as more evidence of
Manhattan's transformation into a city of penthouse-dwelling oligarchs.
But that constantly-churning economic metabolism is the core of New
York's urban soul. What's great about it, though, is that what emerges
out of the mire of the present will last far beyond it. Each generation
scrubs away the legacy of the last—and then makes up its own stories
about how the past came to be.
However you
feel about the new burst of development in New York, it's been too long
since the city built a new megastructure. We're lucky that we get to
watch this one take shape. We'll have more on the project soon.
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