The Vessel
Welcome! Welcome!
Strap in folks for a grammatically questionable, factual debatable, profanity-filled newsletter where I, Sara Regnier, tell you a little more about certain buildings or landmarks in New York City!
I am submitting this down to the last minute this week, but here it is! This week's building is the Vessel dun dun dun!!!!
The Vessel is a tourist attraction / public art (that's me being incredibly generous) installation in Hudson Yards. Hudson Yards is apparently the country's largest private development? Okay? Whatever that means? Train yard turned tourist attraction (the classic pipeline), this neighborhood is full of construction zones, dark sidewalks, and a huge labyrinth of a mall. Our good old friends at Related Companies (long time readers (Parker) may recognize their work from last week's newsletter on 225 Rector Place) decided that this little chunk of Manhattan should be filled with experimental architecture and places for tourists to go "wow! look at that!".
This eyesore was designed by British (yuck) designer Thomas Heatherwick. The elaborate honeycomb-like structure rises 16 stories and consists of 154 flights of stairs, 2,500 steps, and 80 landings for visitors to climb. Literally no other purpose, just to climb. A British attack on America's obesity epidemic? Tactless per usual.
It opened to the public on March 15, 2019. Upon its opening, the Vessel received mixed reviews, with some critics praising its prominent placement within Hudson Yards, and others deriding the structure as extravagant. I will have to agree with the critics as I can think of a bunch of different ways to spend 200 MILLION FREAKING DOLLARS?? For some stairs???? Okay, okay, I will admit, this was very fun to visit at first. Once you get to the top, however, you're like "um okay?" and realize that there really isn't much to this. There are no nice views to gaze upon as you're surrounded by high rises and train yards.
(trigger warning)
After 3 suicides (what a bizarre place to do that), the structure was closed while they figured out a plan to make people stop jumping to their deaths. Glass? Nets? Nope! They implemented a $10 ticket fee and a buddy-system (like what the actual fuck, are these people clinically stupid? "yeah I was going to end it all but I didn't want to pay $10") They claimed the fee would go towards more safety features (BROKE ASS!) but the designer, Mr. Britain, did not want to compromise his artist vision by adding any. So after someone else pretty much immediately committed suicide after the reopening, the structure was permanently closed in 2021. What drew people to take their lives here? Was it the increased levels of depression during the pandemic, the depressing design, or some hex put on the metal by the Italians*? We will never know. Now after only 2 years of being open this structure sits empty, serving as a haunted reminder of the events that took place there and why billionaires should stop spending their money on stupid tourist attractions.
okay now that that's out of the way, here are the
Fun Facts
The structure was inspired by the world-renown stepwells of Rajasthan, which are actually cool and have a real purpose.
A huge reason why this costs ahem* 200 FUCKING MILLION DOLLARS is because the metals used in this project just HAD to be imported from Venice, Italy. I've always said that if my stairs weren't built with modern raw welded and painted copper-like steel, then I don't want them.
One time, we forced Parker's cousin Joe to climb the Vessel despite his crippling fear of heights. He made it about halfway up before having to hold the railing for dear life all the way back down.
That's all for this week folks! Sorry it got a little morbid there, I just find this structure to be such an interesting case study on private developments (I think I understand what that means now) and the fact that they built this without any prior public review.
See you next week!
- Sara
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bruh i did not know it was completely shut down, an actual complete waste of 200 MILLION DOLLARS (and all that for stairs is crazy)