{"id":18728,"date":"2019-09-04T07:01:23","date_gmt":"2019-09-04T14:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heuermontage.com\/?p=18728"},"modified":"2019-09-04T07:01:32","modified_gmt":"2019-09-04T14:01:32","slug":"art-on-the-road-hudson-yards-nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heuermontage.com\/?p=18728","title":{"rendered":"Art on the Road: Hudson Yards, NYC"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hudson Yards, the twenty-five-billion-dollar, twenty-eight-acre new development in what used to be the Meat Packing district is probably the most artificial site in all of New York, an unadulterated celebration of excess and greed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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New High Rises in and around Hudson Yard<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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As the New Yorker<\/a> put it earlier in 2019 when many of the structures in this development opened: it’s the Hotel California<\/em> of NYC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a private space masquerading as a public one. It is the realized vision of one man, the developer Stephen Ross, the founder and chairman of Related Companies, who brought us the Time Warner Center a decade and a half ago. Ross, who will soon move into a penthouse at the development, calls his creation a neighborhood\u2014\u201cthe neighborhood of the future,\u201d in his company\u2019s advertising lingo. In reality it is an enclave, a high-end corporate park buoyed by six billion dollars in <\/em>tax breaks<\/em><\/a>\u2014an amount that dwarfs the<\/em> subsidies offered to Amazon for <\/em>its scuttled Queens headquarters<\/em><\/a>\u2014and designed as a kind of amenity-stuffed Hotel California that its residents never have to leave. (There are a limited number of so-called affordable units; in keeping with precedent in our city\u2019s age of latter-day luxury, the people who live in them will have separate amenities, upstairs\/downstairs style.) The only thing that Hudson Yards is missing is its own weather.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Views from the High Line towards the old Meat Packing District<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The High Line<\/em>, once an imaginative new urban park (although it <\/em>gave real estate companies license to dramatically hike up property values in the Meatpacking District<\/em><\/a>,) now seems like a walkway, filled with throngs of tourists, moving through this luxury neighborhood unstoppably towards the nouveau-riche shopping center at its end and a hollow folly placed in the middle of it all: The Vessel<\/strong><\/em>. If there ever was a perfect symbol for grifter capitalism: this is it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Vessel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Designed by Thomas Heatherwick, the close to $200 million structure sports staircases rising into the air 150 feet – going nowhere. I take that back, they afford you views of the shores of New Jersey, advertisements from the adjacent mall, and endless opportunities to take selfies (note the terms of service agreement, though, which granted The Vessel<\/em> all rights<\/a> to any photos, audio, or video you take at the structure\u2013meaning the developer could use your likeness for any commercial activity forever<\/em>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As a supposed public amenity it sure lacks places to sit, although climbing it is technically free. Clad in gaudy copper it also serves as an amenity<\/a> for the neighboring luxury apartment buildings (condos <\/em>start at $2 million<\/em><\/a>). The website for one of the luxury towers, 1 Hudson Yards, highlights the fact that the building overlooks the Vessel as a prime reason for why someone should spend <\/em>$9,000 per month in rent<\/em><\/a> for a two-bedroom apartment in the tower. The Vessel gives Related built-in marketing. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

No wonder New Yorkers call it the golden Shawarma<\/em>, among others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And no, I did not climb it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fuck The Vessel<\/a><\/blockquote>