Turn the Viaduct into a Park
LOCAL COLUMNISTS HAVE FLOATED the idea for years: Salvage part of the Alaskan Way Viaduct and convert it into public green space, a la New York City’s High Line.
The High Line is Manhattan’s urban wonder park. The nearly mile-and-a-half-long rehabbed railroad winds through Chelsea, the Meatpacking District, and Hell’s Kitchen. Since opening in the summer of 2009, with a second section debuting this past June, the elevated promenade has triggered restaurant, retail, and condo activity, and played host to dance workshops, public art, farmers markets, and festivals. More than five million visitors have strolled the concrete paths lined with naturalistic plantings.
James Corner Field Operations, the architectural firm behind the High Line, is spearheading the revamp of Seattle’s waterfront. It’s a convenient coincidence for those columnists—Crosscut.com’s David Brewster, The Seattle Times’s Danny Westneat—who say taking down the viaduct means doing away with some of the city’s most stunning panoramas.
Could the James Corner crew preserve the views by recreating the High Line?
Fat chance, says Chad Schuster of the Washington Department of Transportation: The creaky Viaduct is beyond repair. And while the High Line did require upgrades—the frame dates from the 1930s—renovating even a portion of our wobbly roadway would necessitate repairs so substantial that it would cost as much as constructing an elevated park from scratch, adds Seattle Department of Transportation spokesperson Rick Sheridan.
And though the setups seem similar, the Viaduct is actually twice the height of the not-so-high High Line. A virtue of New York’s elevated esplanade is the way it connects to the surrounding buildings. To wit, the Standard Hotel straddles it. The Viaduct, 55 feet at its highest, doesn’t afford the same seamless integration. Or easy pedestrian access.
Published: October 2011
It is an interesting idea. You could cut off the second story of the viaduct if you needed to and only save a section of it (the first thought that comes to mind is also the section behind the market. It could be really cool. I hope somebody spends some serious time looking into it.
Hi Tim, this didn’t make it in the article, but according to WSDOT the section behind Pike Place Market also is structurally deficient.
This won’t recreate the High Line. The High Line works because it was built to connect the neighborhood. Highways are built to cut through neighborhoods. The buildings around the High Line either back up to it or encase it creating dramatic crenellations, a series of secret gardens, cut off from the rest of the city, but immediately accessible—which is why the High Line founders started sneaking up there when it was abandoned, it was a hidden world within the city (there’s nothing hidden about the Viaduct). This is a quality Olmsted appreciated and worked to create in his parks by lining the edges with densely-planted berms, lacing bridges, colonnades and outcroppings to manipulate the space into rooms and passages, places for escape and discovery.
The fact that viaduct has buildings on one side, at most—aside from the section at the extreme northern end—means that we can’t achieve this key effect, so comparing it to the High Line, while trendy, isn’t very useful. A better comparison might be to think of it as something between a potential hanging garden and a promenade (such as that on 8th Ave. in Queen Anne or the one in Brooklyn Heights (which hangs over a highway that Robert Moses cut through neighborhoods after tearing down an elevated railway)—with a hint of the Great Wall of China by its height.
Another reason the High Line works is that it’s built close to the ground—about half as high as the viaduct, to my eye—so it’s easily accessible to pedestrians via stairs or even ramps, and to strollers and wheelchairs via short elevators.
Given the Viaduct’s height the best access would be from existing on/off-ramps or additional walkways connected to 1st Ave. (as has been noted above). This serves to extend 1st Ave. toward the waterfront while the waterfront itself remains cut off from the city.
We have to get people to the water, not to a vista from above it. A long, gently sloping ramp using the existing viaduct structure would be the best use of the viaduct to connect the waterfront to the city—in a way similar to the manner that the switchbacks in the Olympic Sculpture Park draw visitors to the water. Such a ramp might be included in the far southern end that others have recommended keeping for it’s view of the approach to the city. This is one of several reasons to keep both levels, should any portion the Viaduct be retained.
Energizing the waterfront will be served best by making it more pedestrian-friendly with wider green-spaces, better mass transit access and gentler inclines at points of access.
For waterfront businesses it will be important that pedestrians and even drivers approaching the waterfront can see that there’s a business destination on the other side, possibly by creating additional retail spaces at certain connecting streets. This is less of an issue if the waterfront businesses are exclusively leisure oriented, in which case they will benefit from a more substantial strip of green-space.
The best comparison to our plans for replacing the Viaduct as a highway is the project in Boston, which resulted in a string of street-level parks above the I-95 tunnel. If we are going to completely remove the Viaduct structure we’ll wind up with something similar. The bike paths, plantings and fountains there are pleasant but there’s no getting around the fact that it’s still a big, stark median in the middle of a fast-moving, four-lane, major urban through-fare.
The biggest advantage to the park is that it goes somewhere; a quick left near Penn Station (geo-socially equivalent to our ferry terminal, but facing east) takes bikers and pedestrians to museums, parks and convention centers in New Southie (think, Harbor Island as Seattle Center). At the other end the bike paths connect to the Charles River Esplanade and bike paths and parks that follow Paul Revere’s route all the way to Lexington, Concord and Walden Pond (about 12 miles in all).
I don’t think either the Boston or NYC models work for Seattle. We’re a different city and we can come up with our own solution. Let’s steal others’ ideas if they work for us while avoiding their mistakes and the parts of their plans that don’t work for us.
It’s great if the viaduct structure can facilitate efforts to expand the waterfront green-space and energize its business locations safely in parts or whole. Where it can’t it should be scrapped. I suspect we’ll find that parts, such as the extreme southern end, might have potential while most sections north of the 1st Ave. off-ramp seem less likely to serve our needs.
This is really a fine discussion and I’m really glad that Mr. Westneat and Mr. Werner are pushing this idea. I totally agree that somehow, someway a park be considered—if not possible in some of the configurations as mentioned, then at least, at the very, VERY least, two to three joined sections (but stand alone, not adjacent to other structures) be considered—maybe toward the south (close to Pioneer Square with obvious tourist benefit). I propose that this would be an independent “sculpture” concept, not unlike the idea behind leaving some of the “cracking towers” in place at Gasworks Park (no, said towers aren’t pretty but who can argue about the success of Gasworks Park?) At least it would be a physical monument to the viaduct (“The Alaskan Way Viaduct Memorial Sculpture”) that could be appreciated in stasis. Or, possibly, if reinforced and safe, an elevator at the north end with access to the original lower and upper road decks with fixed benches and tables (with, of course, some sort of fencing or plexiglass around the perimeter of the decks for obvious safety)
Given the impact that the viaduct has had on Seattle and how it has dominated so much discussion, time, energy from its inception, existence and now—demise, no matter what one’s feelings about this concrete and rebar behemoth, nonetheless, this discussion is so important for it seems only right to have a memorial to something that has, good or bad, so affected all of us in some way. This is truly an opportunity not to be missed. The questions are—what would be a design that would be feasible and that everyone could support and then—how to move it forward?
(For sake of clarification and discussion, ASAP, I hope have a “design concept” on my facebook page and/or my website: www.brucebtaylor.com.)
One often hears this dialogue in Seattle: “it costs more to renovate than to tear down and build from scratch…” yet cities all over the world manage to preserve their notable history.
The entire viaduct does not need to be converted into a Seattle version of the Highline, nor should it. Why not preserve a portion that does have easy access such as the northbound off ramp to 1st Avenue. That off ramp would make for an expansive pedestrian walkway that would directly connect 1st Avenue merchants to a park with a stunning view.
Another distinct difference the viaduct has is the double deck roadway. This could be a covered area used for a variety of activities year-round.
The height of the viaduct is an asset not only for the westward view, but also the view into the city.
Six blocks worth of the Viaduct from about Columbia to Union should be considered. This would make use of the off/on ramps that would provide access to the upper and lower sections of the future park. Incredible potential.
The concept of turning The Viaduct into a park and esplanade has been around since at least 1976. On a magazine show, KCTS had a segment showing architectural and aristic concepts of what The Viaduct could look at, and it looked wonderful. That particular segemnt was shown the same program with a segment on “The Women Of KZAM”.
However, screw New York, and its unimaginatively named “High Line”. We need a truly Seattle take on this.
Just went to New York City and went out of my way to visit the High Line park. I was really moved by the splendid merging of history, opportunity and vision into an amazing park. Right now they’re holding outdoor screenings of movies that feature trains in their amphitheaters, but just having a park with stunning views of the Hudson and the city landscaped with native vegetation was more than enough to justify its existence.
Anyone have any ideas of where to start in order to get this really considered?
Here’s their website if you want to check it out: www.thehighline.org
The High Line converted freightline is a really fantastic merging of history, opportunity and vision into a terrific park. I just got back from a visit to New York, and couldn’t wait to seek out someone who could share my excitement over the use of the viaduct.
I remember reading Mr. Westneat’s column weeks ago, and it really captured my imagination. Any ideas of where to start to get it considered?
Well, the part that I proposed saving is also, like the High Line, connected to the surrounding buildings. It’s the part that runs behind the Pike Place Market. The viaduct there is the same height as the top of the Market. Imagine stepping off the back of the market onto an elevated promenade with those views! It also is similar to the High Line in height where it attaches to Belltown (the section before it enters the Battery Street Tunnel.) That section of the viaduct is also the least-damaged section and wouldn’t require a huge investment to save.
Long live the viaduct!