1,200 Feet Above Ground
I’ve seen the major touristic landmarks in New York like the Empire State, the Statue of Liberty, and Times Square, but never The Edge at Hudson Yards. The Edge is a relatively new sky deck with a cocktail bar that opened in 2019. It’s been two years into the pandemic and right now it felt like an appropriate time to visit.
The Edge is an outdoor sky deck with a cocktail bar.
Sustainable Energy at Hudson Yards
The Edge is a sky deck located at Hudson Yards which is the first LEED Gold Neighborhood Development to be built in New York City. Hudson Yards is a real working prototype of how future cities can work smarter and greener.
The Hudson Yards is creating 14 acres of new parks in a place where no land existed before. A smart “soil sandwich” encourages plants’ roots to grow wide and strong, while a complex cooling system protects them from the heat of the train yard below.
The six acres of new public space already built at Hudson Yards is home to 30,000 plants native to New York, including a forest of 300 mature trees. All in a place with no ground soil.
Soil beds have an average depth of 18 inches, with just 4 feet for large trees. The soil’s chemistry and biology are carefully formulated, with special layers for aeration, irrigation, and drainage.
Tubes circulate cooling liquid through a sealed concrete slab below the soil. This protects plants’ delicate roots from the scorching 150 degrees Fahrenheit heat of the train yard below.
Rainwater that falls on Hudson Yards is collected in a 60,000-gallon tank, then reused for irrigation and mechanical systems. That’s 10 million gallons a year. This conserves clean drinking water, reduces stress on New York’s sewer system, and helps keep the Hudson River clean. It also saves 6.5-megawatt hours of energy and offsets 5 tons of greenhouse gas every year.
With so much activity happening all in one place, Hudson Yards is a new neighborhood for the next generation. Here, people come together in so many different ways to live, work, and play.
The Edge Sky Deck
After the Hudson Yards educational tour about the neighborhood, visitors will enter an elevator and be sent over 100 floors above to reach the sky deck.
I hope you brought your sweater cause it’s chilly up top!
Views from the sky deck. You can see the entire city and neighboring New Jersey from the top.
There’s an area with a glass floor where you can walk over.
“We make our own power. It’s twice as efficient as regular sources and keeps the lights on in a blackout. Hudson Yards is a testing ground for ideas to help cities improve sustainability.”
Closing Thoughts
I liked going above and spending time at The Edge even though there’s not much to do but enjoy the view. There is a cocktail bar but it was 10:30 AM on a Monday when I went to visit. I wasn’t going to start drinking that early. I’m sure it would be more interesting at night, possibly even romantic to view the lights of the big city.
I went to The Edge for the views but I stayed to learn more about the sustainability projects which you can read more about online through the official website. At the end of the tour, you can purchase forty-dollar memorabilia of your visit, with a brochure detailing the construction at Hudson Yards, The Edge, and pictures of yourself to download digitally.
The area surrounding The Edge at Hudson Yards is very nice and the construction is impressive. Hudson Yards is a testament to New York’s engineering and desire to stay ahead of the curve in modernization. I wonder what the area will be like in a couple of years! Do you want to visit The Edge at Hudson Yards?
My friend and I enjoying the New York skyline.
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