A New Meatpacking District Standard
/If you’re here for the sexy side of the Standard Hotel, visit Sexy Futures: A Sexy Voyeurism: New York’s HIgh Line, The Standard Hotel & the Whole Darn Neighborhood. Beware: the photos are naughty.
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We’re back in the High Line, the old freight railroad that’s been transformed into a park on stilts. André Balazs’s modish Standard hotel is open for business. Rising from one of the city’s most sought-after sites, in the heart of the Meatpacking District, two glass-curtain slabs literally jump the tracks of the High Line,
The new Standard is situated on a small plot of land that is one of the most intensely sought-after development sites in the city. According to Vanity Fair, MePa—until recently a Weegee-esque province of bloody-smocked meat workers and transgender prostitutes—has become a high-rent district of shops, restaurants, and clubs.
The Standard, is a Le Corbusier–style glass-slab building, floating above the High Line. Theoretically built in the architectural inspiration of Manhattan’s Lever House, it’s not a particularly attractive building to me, driving by.
The rest of the design world apparently disagrees with me, generally calling the architecture pre-emptively fabulous.
The New York Standard joins already hip siblings in LA and Miami.
For more on New York’s High Line redevelopment project: see Cultural Creatives: The High Line.
See also Anne’s YouTube RedTracker: High Line video: