30 feet up, the High Line invigorates West Village

Behind her and a few blocks to the west, the Hudson River can be glimpsed between buildings, but the woman gazes in the opposite direction, taking in the patchwork of flat roofs along Washington Street. Fronting the rain-slick pavement, taut black banners announce a row of high-end fashion boutiques in old warehouses where sides of beef once hung from hooks. Below the river side of the High Line, a deliveryman bumps a piled-high dolly over the cobblestones on Gansevoort Street.

The neighborhood fairly sizzles with such contrasts: corrugated metal and plate glass, cobbles and asphalt, blue collars and plunging silk necklines. A postindustrial present is overlaying the industrial past faster than you can say Helmut Lang. Thirty feet above, the High Line - an elevated freight railroad built in the 1930s and closed in 1980 - mirrors this progression. By the mid-1980s, when neighborhood activists rallied to oppose its demolition, the track had become a beloved sky garden of ailanthus trees and weedy grasses. Even the structure, still sturdy, possessed a certain beauty, with its graceful proportions and railing of Art Deco-patterned steel.

The park, the first section of which opened in June, kept the railroad’s name and much of its physical structure, including rails from the track. From the tufts of grass on crushed railroad gravel to the massive wooden chaise longues, the park’s design reimagines the steel-age relic overtaken by nature’s softening hand. The park’s designers, landscape architects James Corner Field Operations, architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and planting designer Piet Oudolf, say they did not intend to create a country-in-the-city atmosphere, à la Central Park. While visitors entering the park from its southern terminus on Gansevoort Street do emerge into a celestial grove of young trees and shrubs called Gansevoort Woodland, the airy young forest rises out of railroad gravel in a steel planter that has already acquired a rusty patina. Transparent panels surround this lush cutout of nature, which seems to float above the streetscape. Central Park, it isn’t.

The paved path, made up of plank-shaped strips of beige concrete, is speckled with gray stones, like terrazzo flooring. But this surface is a shape-shifter, exploring all the plastic and sculptural qualities of concrete. The “planks’’ separate into narrow tines that dovetail with remnant rails and vanish into grasses. They rise up like snakes and morph into benches. They swell at the edge of planting beds, just high enough to bump against toes tempted to stray off the paving.

Varied destinations, or planned experiences, like the woodland entrance, are built into the route, which proceeds roughly north-northeast, following Washington Street and then 10th Avenue. (This initial segment ends at 20th Street, with Section 2, from 20th to 30th streets, scheduled to open next year. The northernmost section of the High Line structure, which runs from 30th Street to the West Side Rail Yards, on 34th Street, is still privately owned. Friends of the High Line, a citizens’ advocacy group, is pressing for park development on this final leg.)

Walkers pass through the Washington Grasslands, a meadow of grasses and wildflowers that erupt through irregular breaks in the pavement. Passing more glimmers of the Hudson, colossal brick chimneys, and flapping blue tarps, they walk out onto a sundeck where the western view opens clear to the river. Here are the massive chaise longues, some sliding along a half-circle of train rail, facing the view. On a clear day, Hoboken literally sparkles on the opposite New Jersey shore, and New Yorkers love to gather here at sunset.

“What we have here now is the equivalent of the Key West sunset moment. It’s one of the few public places in the city where you can be above ground level and see a great sunset,’’ says Adrian Benepe, the city’s parks commissioner, who adds, “It’s very romantic at night.’’

Approaching the sundeck, the path forks. To the west, a wide ramp descends to a space with scattered Parisian-style park chairs and tables where food vendors set up on weekends. The east-branching path literally passes through the former bakery building in which Nabisco invented the Oreo cookie. That same rainy morning, an open-air yoga class was taking place under its shelter. The instructor’s command “Bre-e-e-a-a-a-the!’’ at once soothing and bossy, drifted down from the deck, where about 15 people arched their bodies skyward - bridges on a bridge.

For Joshua David, who co-founded Friends of the High Line, the neighborhood advocacy group that rescued the High Line from the wrecking ball, this passage, a sort of monumental covered bridge, is completely unique. “You have this public park on a historic structure 30 feet in the air, with views of the Hudson and the skyline, which is already pretty spectacular,’’ he says. “But what really pushes it over the top is that it’s public parkland that passes through private buildings. You just can’t experience that anywhere else.’’

For out-of-towners, one of the most fascinating destinations on the route is the 10th Avenue Overlook, where bleacher-like benches descend into an open box with a north-facing window. Aside from a long, straight view uptown, the only thing to see below is traffic, both automotive and pedestrian. New Yorkers, apparently, are delighted with this urban terrarium.

“People just love to sit here and watch the cars,’’ says Katie Lorah, communications manager at Friends of the High Line. “It is sort of neat sitting there with the cars driving out from under you.’’

Along the route, people surface from stairs every few blocks, at 14th, 16th, 18th, and 20th streets. (An elevator at 16th, soon to be joined by another at 14th, provides universal access.) About a half mile from Gansevoort Street, a cyclone fence marks the end of Section 1 and allows a tantalizing peek at gardeners planting Section 2. When complete, the two segments will total about a mile and a half.

So far, tourists, design critics, and New Yorkers have struck a rare accord in embracing the High Line. Fire codes limit the capacity to 1,600-1,700 people at a time, and residents have queued up by the thousands on fair-weather weekends.

“In addition to how beautiful it is, the pleasant surprise is how well received it has been,’’ says Benepe. “New Yorkers are tough critics of public space. If it were a car, they wouldn’t just kick the tires, they’d kick in the side panels and take it for a test drive. And this park has passed the test.’’

For New Yorkers and out-of-towners alike, only the people-watching rivals the park’s unique environment. “If I were to give one of the top reasons to seek out the High Line, it’s because it’s such a compelling social environment for New Yorkers,’’ says David. “So you’re getting a real glimpse of a vibrant, creative side of them that you wouldn’t be as likely to see in a more formal setting, like Rockefeller Center.’’

Sure enough, later that morning, a group of young men walked by, engaged in a political discussion that prompted much arm waving. As they passed, one of their voices trailed back, straight out of a movie: “Aw,’’ it said, “just fuhgeddaboudit.’’

Jane Roy Brown can be reached at www.regan-brown.com.