A $150 Million Stairway to Nowhere on the Far West Side

Sep 15, 2016 · 109 comments
Michael Paterson (NYC)
It's magnificent. I've seen it.
RickNYC (Brooklyn)
I just saw it under construction and was dazzled. Bravo to this developer for making something with no quantifiable financial gain. It's beautiful!
Bohdan A Oryshkevich (New York City)
This building is the result of NYC building codes. A few years ago NYC passed a law stating that any new building must have staircases as prominent as its elevators. The idea was to encourage walking and stair climbing. Columbia University has built two such buildings, so has Cooper Union. The NY Times has elevators that stop every two floors with prominent open staircases that connect the floors. This is nothing more than an expensive joke on the NYC building code.
Chris (<br/>)
It looked fabulous when I saw it today. Can't wait for it to be open.
Johnny (Toronto)
A lot of slamming of tourists in the comments. Do New Yorkers not travel? Do they not take selfies in Paris too?
Zappo (<br/>)
This area is a disaster. Indicative of the over crowding mentality of city planners. Dillers Island is a symbol of greed and power gone astray. Welcome to New York!
Eddie Brannan (nyc)
Counterpoint: the area has been revitalized and the architecture of HY is the most exciting the city has seen to date—more akin to what you see in Singapore than the relatively stodgy norms of our supposedly ahead-of-the-curve city. Sure the residences are out of reach of most New Yorkers, but we all benefit from the new network or parks on the west side.
Charles (Long Island)
Re: "...New York’s next significant landmark may be the city’s biggest Rorschach test, too." Judging from the comments, it already is. Though few commenters seem to realize their words say more about them than about the stairway.
Zappo (<br/>)
Susan K. Freedman, president of the Public Art Fund, who has seen the “Vessel” renderings and likes them. “ I admire the ambition,” she added. “You can’t be small in New York.” Extremely sad but true.
Steve Giovinco (NYC)
Architecture to no-where. I am an artist, and love public art. However, this seems to an oddity that while appears monumental, I wonder if the end result could bring on some of the worse things of the urban experience: although the views are wide, it feels entrapped, convoluted.
K Henderson (NYC)
uh oh. The practical: How will those hundreds of outdoor steps and inclines work in the winter? How did they get away with no handicapped access in NYC? The aesthetic: I understand the inspiration but it looks like a hive with lots of eyes -- yet lifeless, military, and industrial. Am I the only one who finds it unsettling to look at it looming over people?
David desJardins (Burlingame CA)
"No handicapped access"? There's an elevator. Did you even read the article?
Don DeHart Bronkema (Washington DC)
1/3 submarine post-melt, pursuant to Nat'l Geodetic Survey for Manhattan...
Mountain Dragonfly (Candler NC)
Let's see...public schools, public transportation, school improvements, potholes, ghettos, policing....of all the civic improvements, the rich and powerful chose this so that more rich and powerful would have have an art installation to look at??? The gardens, fine....but why not take it a step further and promulgate MORE gardens (and maybe more subtle and smaller artistic statements) , marrying them with architecture to not only give a peaceful respite for more everyday people, but start the long road to recognizing climate change and altering our lifestyles to accommodate it? THAT would be a statement by a billionaire that I could embrace!
Robert Walther (Cincinnati)
Architectural statement? Massive art project? I am not qualified to evaluate the aesthetics of lack thereof. The price, $150 MILLION dollars...!!! Send me the specs, I think I can get you a better deal.
James Demers (Brooklyn)
What a strange collection of vitriolic comments here - an article about an art installation seems like an odd place to vent over social injustice.
Evidently, an elevator isn't good enough if it doesn't give access to every one of eighty platforms. Perhaps if the stairs were omitted, so that *nobody* could climb it, the piece would be rendered "fair" and thus tolerable to the aggrieved commenters.
K Henderson (NYC)
counterpoint: It is reasonable to ask why create something alienating to so many people who are not young and/or who have mobility concerns. All they had to do was open up one side so that it is more a semi-circle and if you go to the designers website, one of their models did exactly that. They decided on a bowl
Stickler (New York, NY)
Very dramatic and certainly iconic... but have the designer or the developer stopped to consider the habits of New York City PIGEONS? Perhaps a not insurmountable design challenge, but one best not left to chance or an afterthought, lest this just end up an unused and unpleasant eyesore.
janes' kid (99559)
Yes.
Juno (upstate)
To see this I will now work out( I'm 79) so I can see a ballet and have Pidgon droppings falling on my head.
Oh well, this is NYC.
Alyce (PNW)
Super! If you can pay for it, go for it! I'll come visit.
Martin Zelnik, Architect (Bronx, New York City)

This focal point of Hudson Yards- a 16 story steel structure will consist of 80 viewing platforms &154 flights of stairs and 2500 steps....and some elevators? Its designer, Thomas Heatherwick, "We didn't want to make a sculpture for people to just look at and clap at.".. "The act of rhythmically moving up and down multiple flights of stairs seemed to have the potential to become an extraordinary human experience." Therein exists the problem: "Extraordinary human experience" for whom? The answer:Able bodied men and women who are physically capable of experiencing and transversing the stairs and the steps arriving at the 80 viewing platforms. Who will NOT be capable of partaking of this experience? The wheel chair bound! The disabled using crutches.. the elderly using walkers; the parent pushing a stroller; the elderly? the list can go on and on.
The "Vessel" will be an ADA VIOATION ON STEROIDS and of Local Law 58. Perhaps a later version will be responsive to these accessibility issues. The Mayor's Office for People With Disabilities must step up to the plate and address this extraordinary issue which clearly has serious economic and political implications.
And finally, parents of the emotionally fragile will not be happy to find that self destructive individuals will now find a new venue that will challenge the GW Bridge for new suicide venue statistics!
DixiePigsie (Atlanta)
I'm a bit confused after reading through s article and the article about The Vessel in NY magazine. Is there a lid/top over this edifice? If it is open air what happens in torrential rains and snowfall? Are there places to sit? Yes I noted there is an elevator planned and I'm assuming there must be bathroom facilities. Will there be security walking the levels? Will there be a medical professional on duty in case of heart problems or even falls on the stairs?
Looks like a fine landmark for the City but it needs to be practical in some way, doesn't it?
hg (ny)
Yes, let's not build anything but ranch houses lest someone leap from it. Let's not stretch ourselves and accomodate for those who will need alternate paths (you did see the note about elevators, right?), but rather sit on the ground because no one will ever be able to enjoy it unless they are able to see it the way everyone else is able to see it. In fact, why do art at all? Too open to interpretation. Keep your eye on the conveyor belt. There's nothing else to be had out there.
D. Downer (San Francisco)
And let the ADA lawsuits begin...
John (LA)
Hi! I just happened to be googling some things, and came across this amazing piece. WOW! So creative and edgy all at the same time. This is very inspiring and helping me come up with some great ideas! Aw Awesome work! Keep it up buddy;)
Suzanne Mack (New York, NY)
A heaven for muggers. Having lived in the city for almost 50 years, I know that you can be mugged in Manhattan if you are on an empty side street where for a few minutes there is no traffic and no pedestrians. It happened to me 3 times. I would never venture into the upper reaches or far corners of this building, unless a number of other people were around
Nicole (Brooklyn)
I'm sure it'll be a great place to commit suicide in the future. Especially when there's no more affordable housing left in NYC and public schools have completely collapsed. Money well spent.
MCS (Upper West Side)
What kind of security is planned? How many entrances and exits? It seems like an ideal place for muggers to lurk, waiting for unwary tourists taking their blasted selfies. And how many benches will be provided, to catch your breath after climbing the steps? Any water fountains up there in the air?Maybe this project should stay in the "conceptual" stage. Re-purpose the steel for housing.
Tony (Brooklyn NY)
It would have been far better if Related invested that money in the development of proper A/P processes and systems to pay their vendors on time, especially in IT.
Doug (29 Palms Ca)
It is the basket chapel for selfies and everyone can take pictures of others taking selfies and then there will be selfies of selfies of selfies.
Mark Bavoso (Hong Kong)
As an employee of an influential European design firm with a relatively uneasy conscience about the social value of a lot of the design work we are contracted to do, I would offer one response to the strong invective found here in the comments.

First, most criticisms appear to condemn this project as if it were a cause of New York's economic inequality illness, as opposed to a symptom. In fact, it is a shame that within large development projects such as this one it is a rare exception in which the developer invests money in public space instead of in private property. Had this public "folly" not been designed, I feel certain that its cost would not have gone to the myriad of social causes suggested by readers. It would have gone directly to providing extra services and amenities with which to jack up the price of the development's private luxury lofts and apartments, none of which happen to be open to the public.

If you want to condemn the political system by which a developer gets huge public tax incentives to develop private property, that's appropriate, and I agree with you. But Heatherwick himself is not to blame here; from a design perspective, public spaces in the city rarely are so thoughtful or inventive. This project is a bright spot of careful consideration for the civic realm in what is otherwise a gloomy present of government-sponsored ultra-private luxury development, and for that it may be cheered while still critiquing the grounds against which it sits.
Mike (New York)
He took the commission. That was a choice.

On the piece itself: The mall atrium belongs in the mall itself. He missed by several hundred feet.
MTNJ (New Jersey)
Clearly Mr. Ross has never walked the streets around 34th between 6th and 7th ave. before 8:30 am where social injustice and the absence of stairs to climb at all for many reeks.
Bruno (Caligara)
So how does this Vessel address handicapped access? i'm sure this will need to provide a person in a wheelchair a view from each level as a person who could walk the stairs.
Queensgrl (NYC)
Did you not read the article? Some elevators are provided. Sheesh.
Mike M. (Lewiston, ME.)
The simple word for this piece of "art" is "obscene."

And if you, my well-heeled friends, are upset at this characterization try to putting yourselves in the shoes of a homeless person or struggling working class family who cannot find decent public housing because "deplorable" well-off people like you think New York City should use limited public resources on useless, nihilistic pieces of "art."
Dan Melton (Huntington Beach, CA)
It may not be what was intended. But Vessel seems an appropriate name for a place where one can both rise and descend in such an open space. Uncontained but upon an elegant understatement of strength. Stairs are arguably at the very core of the soul of New York. Architecture is its history, Its future, its imagination and its freedom. Vessel takes what is fundamental to architecture and transforms it into a place of play where we are free to imagine the world as we choose. The perspective is unconfined and all ours. I like it.
akhenaten2 (Erie, PA)
I guess an elevator would spoil it (don't see one). Perhaps then it's a structure exclusively for the able-bodied--the disabled need not enter this experience.
Steve (California)
The article mentioned "there will be an elevator for anyone unable to reach the top."
Brandon (Murfreesboro, TN)
From the article... "The design reflects Mr. Heatherwick’s belief that city natives are always looking for their next workout. “New Yorkers have a fitness thing,” he said. (It will test many city folk who can barely climb into their Ubers, but there will be an elevator for anyone unable to reach the top.)"
Dan Stackhouse (NYC)
They did say there'd be an elevator, probably it's just not in the drawing because it wrecks the lines of the thing. But I don't think the disabled, specifically those in wheelchairs rather than all the rest of the disabled who could use the stairs, would be missing out on anything either. You can climb up 15 flights of stairs in many buildings in NYC, and get far better views from far higher up.
Matthew Micka (Arica, Chile)
So, er, nobody's worried about people jumping to their deaths from this thing?
Neal (New York, NY)
I'm contemplating it already.
Paul (NY)
Good idea. A British artist , and made in Italy. Because NY doesn't have any artists or fabricators
Susan Anderson (Boston)
Looks like a ribcage. Some dominant giant extraterrestrial being? It will be prettier when it gets some patina though.
avery (t)
If you try to keep the money out of NYC, it will just go somewhere else, and NYC will lose all its interest. In the 21st C, the 1% want a place to congregate. If it's not NYC, it'll be Albany or somewhere else. The 1% don't want to live with the 99%. Hence, Greenwich, Southampton, and TriBeCa. Only poor people want diversity.
Neal (New York, NY)
"Only poor people want diversity."

Not sure what you're trying to say here. Are you suggesting we poors eat cake, or our own young?
Quisp (New York, NY)
Ross got a $328 million tax abatement for this project. If he needed a tax break, then where did he get the money for this very large, very silly wastebasket? Seriously. A developer getting this kind of tax break should be prevented by the city from spending money like this. It's repellent. Our schools need help. Our subways need help. And Thomas Heatherwick takes more to the bank. Stand up De Blasio. This is the kind of thing you were elected to stop.
Zappo (<br/>)
Its a monument to the rich and powerful.
PE (Seattle, WA)
The money should go to creating more city parks and/or updating old parks in depressed areas. That would help more people than this tourist maze.
scientella (Palo Alto)
I would perhaps think this ok were it beautiful, but its not!

The environmental damage, the waste of money. The elitist "art" while people go hungry. The historical follly - and an ugly one at that.
TyroneShoelaces (Hillsboro, Oregon)
Is Mr. Heatherwick prepared to pay royalties to the estate of M.C. Escher?
NYer (NYC)
"A $150 Million Stairway to Nowhere"?

What else need be said? Really!

ANOTHER $multi-million vanity project that's really a blot on the public landscape?

And this whole mega-tower (taxpayer subsidized) "development" is yet another of Bloomberg's legacies to NYC! Instead of more affordable housing or spaces most people can use, NYC gets $mega-million condos and stairways to nowhere!
Tony (Brooklyn NY)
Gotta take care of your friends...
Steve Sailer (America)
One of the more delightful names at delivering updated Lewis Carroll-industrial grade whimsy to the world is Thomas Heatherwick, an architect, designer, and all-purpose Willy Wonka.

Heatherwick sees himself as a successor to Victorian engineer-impresarios like Isambard Kingdom Brunel. London mayor Boris Johnson commissioned him to design the new doubledecker bus (basic idea: make it look like the old one from the late ’40s, but with bigger windows) and director Danny Boyle hired him to the design the cauldron for the 2012 Olympic torch.

The Bombay Sapphire gin company got him to design a swirly update of that most characteristic structure of Victorian Modernism, the greenhouse.

Rich people all over the world are now hiring Heatherwick for increasingly grandiose Little England projects.

http://www.unz.com/isteve/thomas-heatherwicks-brand-britannia/
Patrick (NYC)
What if all the tourists loaded up one side of it to look at something interesting, like a sunset? Mighten it tip over and roll into the Hudson? That would be terrible.
deirdrepierson (Olympia WA)
Perhaps each step could turn into a bunk for a homeless person, with the landings providing communal spaces & restrooms. Combine this beautiful art with a statement worth making with that kind of money - a win/win.
David Meli (Clarence)
Will it be wheel chair accessible? I see a lawsuit here.
ChesBay (Maryland)
I guess there's an elevator. Whoopee.
ChesBay (Maryland)
I wonder how much progress could have been made in the fight against homelessness, and hunger, with $15 million dollars.
ChesBay (Maryland)
...$150 million (typo)
Joseph McShane (Prescott Az.)
A fifteen story walkup with no bed.
Dan Stackhouse (NYC)
No bathroom either, come to think of it.
avery (t)
Perfect for the city that never sleeps. Maybe this structure should be nicknamed 'Insomnia Tower.'
Susan Anderson (Boston)
How about some affordable housing for the service classes that can't live near their jobs?

Conspicuous consumption and in the path of global warming too. Waste of material and resources.

Some people have too much money; how about a tax system that removes some of this self-indulgent excess.
Harryo (Wa)
Shares nothing with the landscape, produces only it's own dimension, so ugly is being kind. Like the Eiffle Tower, hardly.
ChesBay (Maryland)
It IS ugly. :-( Some people just can't think of a constructive way to use $150 million. This is little better than burning it, or flushing it down the toilet. Disgraceful. Can't believe we didn't heard about this months ago, when public pressure might have done something about it..
Neal (New York, NY)
I imagine the sick, the starving, the exploited, the displaced and the homeless will be charmed and delighted by this new jewel in our cityscape. I'll take the elevator, thanks.
GaryB (SiValley)
The whole point of "social climbing" is to network. There should be coffee bars etc sprinkled around with a large one on the top.
Shana (New Orleans)
$150 million would sure put a dent in helping the city's homeless. What an appalling waste of money.
Jonathan (Los Angeles)
God forbid the city used that 150 million to help with some more serious issues they are dealing with such as mental health, homeless, horrible roads, and so on. But when you compare it to the Freedom Mall that cost 4 billion to build, this thing is a bargain.
Charles (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Let's rename Manhattan's Meatpacking District, Upper West Side and Downtown to Frontierland, Magic Kingdom and Fantasyland once and for all.
Iva Kravitz (Brooklyn)
These snarky comments totally miss the point that anyone can walk or climb onto this structure; it actually seems that it will be as democratic as anything in New York City.

A waste of money? More than demolishing and replacing two perfectly workable baseball stadiums with two others in the same spots under Michael Bloomberg? More than building palaces for the extremely wealthy? I think not; there is a legitimate role for a place-making gesture, especially one open to the public, in a large project like Hudson Yards.
Mike (New York)
Iva,
You run a public relations and marketing company for designers. Any chance you are affiliated with this project?
ChesBay (Maryland)
What a dumb, shortsighted comment. Will they be letting the homeless sleep there, or be handing out free lunches? Oh, I forgot, you folks want to see that sort of thing "privatized."
Quisp (New York, NY)
The place-making gesture this sends to the people of New York feels a lot like an upturned middle finger.....
DavidF (NYC)
It's all in the placement, at the end of the High Line which will ensure this is a success. I don't appreciate the notion that someone designs something with the intention of imposing a "Landmark" on a City out of vanity.
This is just a further contrivance being imposed on the West Side. The fabricated nature walk passing the artificial island leading to the stairs to nowhere, an appropriate metaphor for present day NYC.
avery (t)
I love the High Line. And I love Hudson Park along the West Side Highway. I'm working 60hrs a week to own a 3BR in TriBeCa.
K Henderson (NYC)
David, You dont like the highline, which is highly walkable and relaxing and invigorating to visit? It is basically an elevated park. You forget that that area of the West Side desperately needed something to enliven it, and the finished result is good. I dont like this beehive monstrosity but the Highline was a success.
jtd (nyc)
I predict it will become a worldwide destination for suicide jumpers. A really bad idea and ugly too.
GaryB (SiValley)
I predict it will become a worldwide exercise stop for those who do stair climbing.
Hamilton Fish (Brooklyn)
my thought exactly when i read this yesterday. mind boggling that the article doesn't mention this, and the artist rendering suggests the architect did not consider the possibility either. these people must live in a bubble. have they not read about the suicides from the GW Bridge, the NYU library, and other places the Vessel brings to mind?
Giskander (Grosse Pointe, Mich.)
Apparently you missed the fencing shown in the illustrated rendering. Next, we'll be fencing off all access to the waterfront.
scorcher14 (San Francisco)
There's no where to sit. After climbing 15 stories, you'd want to rest for a bit before beginning the climb down.
Django (NewOrleans)
You're absolutely right! What a great picnic spot the top could make. I hope that benches of some sort are in the plans somewhere..
Earlene (New York)
That would be loitering, which, if you're of color or homeless, will be swiftly dealt with by plainclothes police officers who will choke you to death and receive a raise for doing it.
dmm (USA)
Will there be an elevator?
Christine (Boston)
Yes the article states there will be.
planetary occupant (earth)
Yes, there will be an elevator - see the article.
Daedalus (Rochester, NY)
If a rich man wants to make a statement, he should fund one of those white elephants known as "sports facilities", sparing a city somewhere from sport club blackmail, and just incidentally pleasing a lot of the people he routinely flies over on his way from coast to coast.
Dan Stackhouse (NYC)
Obviously this is a large replica of a Klingon chastity-belt-like device, worn in the same manner as a codpiece. The long climb represents the difficulty, in Klingon society, of getting past second base with a romantic partner.

Also, something the designers might have missed is that at some point, someone is going to jump off the top of this thing to their death. As there are around 130 suicides in NYC per year, this would seem like an aesthetically pleasing thing for such despondent people to jump off of.

Nonetheless it's quite pretty and I look forward to organizing a large group to perform a water-balloon fight on it someday.
horatio (fishkill)
The "Vessel" looks amazing. But it is difficult to tell if it is pro-Clinton or pro-Trump, so final judgement remains uncertain for many individuals.
Dan Stackhouse (NYC)
Obviously it's a pro-Sanders monument, encapsulating his "stairway to nowhere" approach of idealistic policies that could not possibly work.
John Brown (Idaho)
I guess the "Progressive Elite" will just never understand.

$ 150,000,000.00 is a great deal of money.

Most Americans never make $ 1.500.000.00 in their lives

As other Commentators have said - perhaps the money could be better spent
on the poor.

Looking at the renderings of the Structure seems like a place where
teenagers will hang out and they and others will take drugs, engage in sex
rob those foolish enough to wander up or down the stairways.
Jay (NYC)
Stephen Ross, the man paying for this, was a major supporter and contributor to the 2012 presidential campaign of Mitt Romney. Why did you assume he was a "progressive elite?" He's also a donated a lot of money to philanthropic causes.

Also, I don't think we should abandon public art in fear of hypothetical teenage fornicating.
jenleemw (baltimore)
I will not attempt to defend the $150 Million being spent on this.
Of course it pales in comparison to the $1.15 Billion dollars spent on the AT&T Stadium that Texans are paying so that a mere 80,000 or so fans can watch "America's Team" play there 8 times a year from September to January.
On the other hand your incredibly low opinion of metropolitan area teenagers is wrongheaded and unfair.
Maybe it's best if you just stay put in Idaho along with all of the "survivalists" your state seems to attract.
Tom (Boulder, CO)
We can tell you are from Idaho and have watched too many crime films about NYC. New York is quite safe, people will not be taking drugs, having sex and robbing tourists there.
Mike (New York)
I miss the rail yard.
frazerbear (New York City)
Is there anything real estate developers cannot do? From eliminating zoning to building ugly sky scraping abodes for foreigners who do not use them, now imposing their taste in art to a space the public cannot help but see, there is no end to their power. Except for the richest among us, New Yorkers have lost any semblance of control over our City.
Helen Savage (New Jersey)
They can't stop the inevitable flooding that will become commonplace over the next couple of decades. This development should never have been built. A complete waste of money. Read the article in NY Mag: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/new-york-future-flooding-cl...
Andymac (Philadelphia)
It'll probably get a lot of use and enjoyment, as it gives people the chance to climb up and take selfies with the view as background. And when did the people ever "have control" over the city--the '70s?? The elite have always controlled NYC, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.
MDM (NYC)
Maybe donate that money to help the home or fix major infrastructure issues??
Jay (Bonita Springs, FL)
What a flagrant display of waste! There are countless other ways the civic body of New York could benefit from $150 million.
Tom (Boulder, CO)
You are missing the point. One of the great parts of living in a place like NYC are the great public spaces. Grand Central, Central Park, Rockefeller Center, the new WTC transit center. They all could have been built for less, and we are glad that they weren't.
ChesBay (Maryland)
Tom--None of us critics are "missing the point." YOU are missing the point. I'd say you probably subscribe to the Trump philosophy of public responsibility and charity.
Quisp (New York, NY)
Those were public spaces. This is an architectural folly, a massive piece of ego entirely without purpose that we're subsidizing through tax breaks to the developers. Or maybe not your tax dollars, since you're in Colorado.....Mind if we send it to you in Boulder?
rimbaud (NYC)
I like art that pushes boundaries. This thing, however, looks like a bee's abdomen. Maybe it's just me.
avery (t)
it's art that burns calories.