Joshua David and Robert Hammond
Feel free to thank
them for founding
the High Line
When Joshua David and Robert Hammond attended the same 1999 planning and preservation
meeting in their Chelsea neighborhood,
neither had a clue the encounter would
result in making Manhattan history. The
meeting’s purpose: to discuss the fate of
the long-abandoned elevated railroad
that once serviced the West Side’s famous
meatpacking district. The overwhelming
consensus: demolition.
“We were the only ones in the room
interested in saving it. Everyone else
thought it was an eyesore, which sur-
prised us,” David recalls. “Robert and
I separately fell in love with the High
Line, looking up at its underbelly from
the street. We loved the heavy, indus-
trial quality of it, coupled with a wild-
flower landscape that had seeded itself
over time.”
That neither had expertise in urban
planning, landscape architecture or
historic preservation deterred them
not a bit.
Co-founders
Joshua David and
Robert Hammond
Rosario
Dawson
National
Train Day
National Train Day arrives May 12, and with it comes special exhibits and events at stations
in New York City, Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles, some of the major train cities in
the United States. Model trains and train equipment will be on display, and this year’s host,
Rosario Dawson, gets the action under way. nationaltrainday.com
DaWSoN:MICHaELBuCkNER/GETTyIMaGES
