At the far edge of Manhattan’s West Side, there’s a new sculpture that looks like shawarma. Or a honeycomb, or a wastebasket, or a jungle gym. Like a cloud passing through the sky, it takes a different shape for each person who looks up.
The Vessel, a 15-story matrix and more than 150 flights of stairs, is New York City’s latest monument to urban planning. With 80 viewing platforms, the art piece is meant to be the aesthetic anchor of the burgeoning Hudson Yards district and an opportunity for tourists and locals to see Manhattan from 150 feet up. Its opening has, however, provoked concern.
The $25 billion Hudson Yards development was already turning heads for its sleek, planned community and $6 billion in tax breaks. The neighborhood seems half tourist trap, half “Truman Show” utopia. Its planning took place with no apparent regard for the desires or expenses of actual Manhattanites. The New Yorker’s Alexandra Schwartz called Hudson Yards “the Hotel California of New York.”
If the installation of a luxury neighborhood right by loading docks and an active train yard seemed odd, the unveiling of the Vessel didn’t help. Like much art these days, it seems primed mainly for social media: Tourists stop on the walkways to snap photos and thousands of people follow @thevesselnyc on Instagram. As of this month, you can pick up a free ticket across from the 150-foot-high sculpture and climb its 2,500 steps.
Then came the revelation that Hudson Yards claimed the right to your photos and videos if you snagged a ticket to the Vessel. In response to the swift backlash, it modified its terms of service so picture-takers keep their own property but the development could still use content posted to social media for promotional purposes.
That public relations nightmare may have been mitigated, but the Vessel still has more wording to tweak. This time, it’s changing its name. Hudson Yards is asking visitors to submit ideas for new names. Viewers have already suggested the Pine Cone, but the structure reminds me of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.”
In the song the band sings, “There’s a lady who’s sure / All that glitters is gold/And she’s buying a stairway to heaven.” The Vessel ended up costing more than $150 million, about twice the original estimate. For the developer, that’s a small price to pay for a glittering stairway. And since the Vessel has already generated so much buzz, it doesn’t matter where it actually leads.
