The Vessel

This swath of land, holding home to The Vessel, The Shops at Hudson Yards, The Shed, and The Edge, was home to the Hudson “Rail” Yards in the 1930s. Since the 1970s, once architects figured out that they could construct a deck over the tracks, development plans have been thrown up and around the area, none of them landing until the 2010s. There were several proposals for stadiums including a replacement for Madison Square Gardens, a new Yankee stadium, and even a stadium for the 2012 Olympics that would become home to the Jets football team. All of which never happened. 

The space remained undeveloped for decades, all because there was a belief that if anything were to fill the space, it must be grand. The physical restrictions of the space had a lot to do with the meticulous planning as well, with “only 38 percent of the site (able to support) construction, so developers (had) to maximize the usable area by building as high-density, and high-profit, as possible.” This is the reason why all the sites we visit today are connected. Each site's construction depended on another.

The Vessel opened on March 15th, 2019. It quickly became one of the Instagram hot-spots in New York City. The location is tagged about once every minute on Instagram and remains a ‘hot-spot’ of activity on Snapchat. An interesting part about the site is that the ownership of visitors photos became a very controversial subject. The Vessel claimed ownership of all photos taken of the site without asking permission or needing to cite credit. It was written into the terms and conditions on the ticket itself. Some people didn’t seem to mind, as it is just a photo, but the clause got a lot of attention from the media. This resulted in the clause being edited, allowing the photographer to retain ownership of the photo, but still allows The Vessel to repost and publish photos taken by other people. However, the space isn’t made just for taking photos. People are meant to interact with the space through its 154 interconnected flights of stairs.

The Vessel is constructed as a part of outdoor public space, being a landmark for the surrounding gardens (where construction was physically limited). Because of the outdoor nature of the structure and the large capacity (700 people), this space is natively better designed to fit COVID’s health and safety measures. The climbing nature of the structure also makes it a great place to really get some exercise beyond the climb to one’s fifth floor walk-up apartment. The base also provides great spatial ability to be transformed, as it was used to create an outdoor screening area during the pandemic. 

The fact that so much of the space within Hudson Yards is built to accommodate many people with so much reliance on outdoor space, makes it one of the more safe places for people to hang out within New York during the pandemic. The outdoor qualities of The Vessel, The Highline, and The Edge are great public spaces for local New Yorkers to get fresh air outside their apartments. The fact that all the stops on our tour, including The Whitney and The Shops at the Hudson Yards, are built to house thousands of people, with their design intentions to attract a lot of tourists, now lends itself as a great resource to local New Yorkers to visit these places, as they have plenty of room for social distancing. 

• Indrisek, Scott. “Is There a Point to the Vessel If You’re Not There for the Selfie?” Observer. March 20, 2019. Accessed November 2020. https://observer.com/2019/03/hudson-yards-vessel-made-for-selfies-what-else/
• Mattern, Shannon. “Instrumental City: The View from Hudson Yards, circa 2019.” Places Journal. April 2016. Accessed November 2020. https://placesjournal.org/article/instrumental-city-new-york-hudson-yards/?gclid=CjwKCAiA-f78BRBbEiwATKRRBN39Qc74iuN_3tTG3t3Biddc0wldzchxfv100oa5yQvp75zqWVkzaBoCXYoQAvD_BwE&cn-reloaded=1 
• Paunescu, Delia. “Despite controversial Vessel photo policy, visitors kept Instagramming.” Curbed New York. March 21, 2019. Accessed November 2020. https://ny.curbed.com/2019/3/21/18275790/hudson-yards-vessel-photo-policy-social-media