Obsolete infrastructure or civic asset?
Freight traffic on the elevated line ended in 1980, leaving a structure with no active transport role and an uncertain future. Friends of the High Line formed in 1999 to argue for preservation and reuse, but a December 2001 demolition order showed that the park now familiar to visitors was not yet the inevitable outcome.
What preservation made possible
Advocacy stopped demolition, and the first section opened as public space in 2009, with later phases extending the reuse. The record supports a successful preservation campaign; it does not by itself resolve the project’s costs, neighborhood effects, or what another land-use choice might have produced.