An Exclusive Aerial Look At The High Line's Newly Opened Final Section, The Spur

The widest open space of the High Line opened Tuesday morning, marking the completion of the wildly popular elevated park. A 16-foot bronze sculpture by Simone Leigh anchors the new section, called the Spur, which offers vistas in every direction.

The Spur is a 420-foot section that extends over the intersection of 10th Avenue at West 30th Street. This area was once threatened by developers eyeing Hudson Yards, but the High Line and other community activists rallied together to preserve the abandoned tracks, with New York City acquiring the section in 2012. The final design for the Spur was announced in 2016 and took into account community input.

The large deck over the intersection will feature public programming, and restrooms have been tucked under a raised planter nearby. Fun fact: The raised planters that lead to the deck have the deepest soil in all of the High Line, allowing for bigger trees to be planted.

At the center of the deck is the High Line Plinth, where artwork will rotate every 18 months. The inaugural piece is Leigh's stunning Brick House, which is a bust of a black woman. Leigh said, "I was thinking about representing black beauty as being solid, and femininity about strength and solidity and not weakness." She added that, "I'm delighted to see the sculpture from so far away, down 10th Avenue..." (Leigh won the Guggenheim's 2018 Hugo Boss Prize and her work can also be seen in the current Whitney Biennial.)

Along the deck, you can see the remnants of rails that led to the James Farley Post Office; freight trains would deliver mail to the post office by elevated tracks up.

The deck also has sections of tiered seating as well as balconies for visitors to get slightly different perspectives of the neighborhood, as well as lush plantings around the perimeter, softening the sleek modernity of the Hudson Yards complex. There's also a good old REVS mural in the lot on the northeast corner of 30th Street and 11th Avenue.

"When [the High Line] was repurposed and saved, people thought well that's going to be nice, but no one expected almost 8 million people every single year were going to come to this now international symbol," City Council Speaker Corey Johnson declared during a press conference today. "The High Line is a crown jewel of New York City. It is something that New Yorkers are proud of, it's something that people from all over the world, when they come to New York City, they go to the High Line."

The Spur opens to the public on Wednesday, June 4. The High Line is open 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.