Content warning: mentions of suicide.
When you live in a city like New York, there is a tendency to proudly deny any interest in the activities that bring droves of tourists to the place you live. My parents were among these people — fast walkers who taught me to lament the slow trudging of tired tourists and regular subway-takers, even on days when rain beat down on the city making the slick, deserted underground tunnels feel like a waterlogged wasteland.
So, it was surprising to me, even as a child, that our family would regularly embark on a weekend walk along the High Line to Chelsea Market. If you are at all familiar with New York, you perhaps already understand the strangeness of ardent New Yorkers taking a young family to these places as a coveted ritual. If you are less familiar with New York, all you really need to know is that crowded places like those require a steady, unwavering patience — something not often found in young children or Manhattanites.
The crowds walking the High Line and shopping in Chelsea Market have starkly increased since the days when my family would wander through the dimly-lit, cacophonous halls of the indoor covered market to buy books and eat grilled cheeses. Still, the High Line and Chelsea Market remain the only tourist attractions I can really bear to visit. Surrounded by sightseers and New Yorkers alike, I ponder the time that has passed since I was a few feet shorter and these places, although busy, were not yet flooded with the large, blocky shopping bags distinct to hordes of tourists. I recognized how easily beloved local places could become global phenomena, and this realization led me to avidly follow the construction of Hudson Yards and the building of the Vessel.
The High Line starts in the West Village and extends about one-and-a-half miles to 34th Street along Manhattan’s West Side. By the end of this walk, you enter the newly-built, commercial neighborhood of Hudson Yards. It is like something out of a dystopian movie with a message about the imminent extinction of life as we know it: Tall glass buildings, where sun glints off the endless windows, blind you in the morning, midafternoon and somehow even the evening. Designer shops and expensive restaurants speak to the opulence of the place.
Although Hudson Yards is advertised as a cultural center for New York and a model for how future cities might be built, the reality of the space suggests that only a certain demographic is welcome: New Yorkers willing to spend millions of dollars on residences and tourists willing to buy deconstructed desserts.
It is perhaps this exclusivity that led the Hudson Yards developers to pair the creation of the neighborhood with the creation of the Vessel. If anything, the Vessel is more of a structure than a building. It features criss-crossing staircases that climb into the sky, offering those who visit and scale the structure the chance to look out over the gray water of the Hudson River and contemplate the New Jersey skyline.
The Vessel was imagined as an interactive space and artwork; placed at the end of the High Line, it beckons people into Hudson Yards. Instead, tourists and New Yorkers might first climb up the 154 winding, interconnected flights of stairs within the structure and then, with wind-whipped faces and drunk on the feeling of towering above toy-like cars, descend into Hudson Yards with an increased willingness to buy a $7 latte.
This is a cynical view of the Vessel. But I am not a fan of the structure, and many others in New York are not either. When I pitched the idea for this piece in a warm and cramped room of The Michigan Daily newsroom, the other New Yorker in the group turned to me and with a knowing look said how much she despised the building.
I followed the construction of the Vessel so closely because I knew that it would make the High Line an even busier place. No longer would the High Line be a destination in and of itself. Instead, it seemed likely that it would become merely a means to reach the Vessel, with 16 stories of polished steel glimmering at the end — beckoning visitors like a futuristic pot of gold. When the construction of the Vessel finished in 2019 and the structure opened to the public, I went with a friend and climbed the winding stairs. I wanted to see the building that I believed would change the part of Manhattan I knew so intimately.
I remember feeling dizzy. Looking down at the staircases below, I realized we were in a machine pushing people toward the top. Forward movement felt necessary. You could stop on a landing if you wanted, but others impatiently signaled they wanted a turn. And really, how long could I look at the New Jersey skyline, a landscape I have seen all my life, pretending to be fascinated? The structure’s name — the Vessel — suggests that those who climb its stairs are precious cargo, but as I progressed upwards, never have I felt so inconsequential.
We were all the same — moving in the same direction, taking the same pictures and uttering the same appreciative phrases. In the years following the construction of the Vessel, it is this feeling of a loss of concrete identity that I felt when I climbed its stairs that have led me to try and understand the events that ultimately occurred at the structure’s pinnacle.
Shortly after opening to the public, three individuals committed suicide from atop the Vessel. Following these three suicides, the Vessel temporarily closed, but ultimately reopened with new safety measures in place. However, after a 14-year-old boy killed himself in the summer of 2021, the Vessel once again closed itself to the public and it is unclear if another opening date is in sight. I would appreciate the building never being reopened, and I think I share this opinion with many other New Yorkers.
Even if the structure remains shuttered, questions remain: How does a community move forward when a building meant to function as an adult playground becomes a monument to pain and grief? Driving or walking down the West Side of Manhattan, upon reaching Hudson Yards, the building is unavoidable. It is gargantuan in stature, and I turn my head away as I pass — but not before I see hordes of tourists standing at the base of the structure holding up peace signs, taking selfies.
This is not an indictment of the tourists who visit the Vessel and snap a picture in front of it; I believe they don’t know the reason why the building is closed. The Vessel’s website makes no direct mention of the suicides. Yet it’s always striking to watch people pose with their loved ones in front of a building that, to so many New Yorkers, is a symbol of tragedy.
It does not seem likely that the building will be torn down — and I do not necessarily advocate for this — but it also seems untenable that it should remain as it is. This landscape on the West Side of Manhattan has become transfigured by this building, which now functions as a monument to grief.
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The events at Hudson Yards and the Vessel are not unique. It is not an uncommon fate for a skyline to be marred by a building or structure that evokes tragedy. Consider the Golden Gate Bridge. The iconic bridge, while known for its views of the San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean, is also considered one of the deadliest suicide locations in the world. From the time of its completion in 1937, about 1,700 people have used the bridge to take their lives.
Many of the families of these individuals have long advocated for a steel net to be placed under the bridge as a preventative measure. The construction of such a net began in 2018 and was completed in early January of this year. While this net will prevent a significant number of suicides, it does not erase the history of those that have already occurred.
When I first visited the Golden Gate Bridge, I knew nothing of this history. I was 6 years old, protected by the dreaminess of a happy childhood where such things as suicide do not exist. I experienced the bridge solely through a lens of unbounded joy. I did not mind the wind blowing my rain jacket hood over my eyes and laughed as I tried to see past the dense mist rushing over the water.
I think this sense of wonder must be similar to what the tourists at the Vessel feel as they crane their necks to look up at a structure that towers over them, and whose mirror-like material reflects back their own astonished faces. It is unlikely that older tourists who visit the Golden Gate Bridge are unfamiliar with its history, and even if they are, the steel nets under the bridge make it apparent. It is only children who might remain the blissful, unaware tourists. I always examine the tourists in front of the Vessel, and I wonder what those who understand the gravity of the Golden Gate Bridge make of the children laughing while a light mist curls through their young, soft hair.
I don’t think they feel bitterness; I don’t feel bitterness when I look at the tourists in front of the Vessel. But I wonder if they feel the same heaviness that I do when I pass by Hudson Yards’ failed play structure. If they knew the history, would they still be smiling? No longer would the structures evoke the same joy, for they now have to be considered alongside the sadness of their history. Such a structure then makes its surrounding landscape a more complex space.
It’s a space where one is pushed to think — to think about the fragility of life. When we embark on outings as tourists, I don’t think this is usually what we are searching for. We are looking to experience something — a view, a work of art — that many have seen before. We are looking to be part of something bigger than ourselves. We are not seeking to isolate ourselves by thinking of life in contrast with death, which is so fundamentally solitary.
People will always visit monuments like the Vessel and the Golden Gate Bridge, whether they are aware of their history of suicide or not. I am not arguing that in order to honor those who have died and escape the grief now native to these places, we should stop going to them all together. I simply want to point out that the landscapes where these monuments stand have been changed in such a profound and overwhelming way that we never anticipated.
There are physical precautions that can be taken to prevent the occurrence of more suicides like the nets implemented at the Golden Gate Bridge. The Vessel has signaled that they are looking into how to make the structure more secure. These are direct actions that can prevent further tragedy, but the fact remains that these monuments will continue to stand. As long as they continue to stand, they remain partially defined by their tragedies.
That is why these buildings feel so consequential to me. They remain destined to haunt the thoughts of the individuals who know their stories. They become places where baffled communities grieve the loss of life. If these places were not influenced by tragedy, the sharing of the space would look different. Joy is easily externalized and transferred to those who surround you. A laugh floats across the wind and reaches the ears of a stranger. You might ask someone to take a picture of you and your friends and, in this interaction, learn what brought this unknown person to the same place as you.
Sharing a space when we are joyful is more visible, and a connection to others might come more easily. But engaging with monuments that are accompanied by the sadness of their histories brings us together in a different way. Through the silence of contemplation we can acknowledge that we are allowed to feel sadness about the deaths of people we did not know, and we are reminded of our own mortality and personal hardships. These monuments become a place where a public consideration of grief is acceptable.
As a society we so often try to hide and conceal grief: Crying in public is frowned upon and immense discomfort arises when the death of a person is mentioned in a conversation. These monuments become places where it is okay to pause with a group of strangers and consider the gravity of the space. We understand each other’s silence because we are thinking about the same things.
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The Vessel’s website now contains a sentence that reads, “Each of you matter to us, and to so many others.” I don’t know if those words were there before the four suicides, but it seems plausible that they were added only in the aftermath. They are words that speak to the importance of understanding that you are loved, which is a sentiment often encouraged in the wake of suicide.
If monuments where tragedy has occurred remain central to the landscapes that we love, these words might suggest that the way to find solace is through connecting with others in these spaces. Through communal grief, we are forced to reconcile with the scale of sorrow that occurs after suicide. Yet, because so many people are similarly engulfed by sadness, perhaps this is also how we find the hope necessary to move forward. In knowing that many others shoulder the weight of a tragedy, it becomes easier to look back up at a building that has taken far more than it has given. By recognizing that others matter to us and we matter to others, we are encouraged to embrace the grief these monuments have left behind as a community.
Statement Correspondent Olivia Kane can be reached at ohkane@umich.edu.