October 24, 2024
In 2019, when the multiuse complex known as Hudson Yards opened in New York City, the centerpiece was a 150-foot-tall climbable sculpture called The Vessel.
Designed by British architect Thomas Featherwick and built at a cost of $200 million, the work wasn’t what you’d call universally beloved. New Yorkers gave it nicknames like “the Shawarma” for its resemblance to meat on a vertical spit. The New York Times described the Vessel as a “waste-basket-shaped stairway to nowhere, sheathed in a gaudy, copper-cladded steel.”
I was one of the few who disagreed. I thought this modern-day architectural folly was a wonderfully whimsical addition to the New York skyline, not to mention catnip for shutterbugs.
Climbing up and down the Escher-esque stairways (inspired by ancient Indian stepwells, according to the architect) offered newly scrambled vistas at each level as well as splendid river views. For me, the Vessel recalled a favorite book of mine when I was about 12: William Sleator’s House of Stairs, about a group of teenage orphans who are brought, as part of a government experiment in mind control, to a massive space with no walls, ceiling, or floors—just stairways. Maybe that’s not the most positive connection, but the Vessel environment did have the power to spark my imagination.
And it seemed like affection for the attraction was growing among the public, based on the many tourists the site drew. Then, tragically, four people committed suicide by jumping off the Vessel on separate occasions, forcing Hudson Yards to close the structure to visitors in 2021.
Three years later—on October 21, 2024—The Vessel reopened, albeit with some major changes. I laced up my sneakers to take another climb and see if the attraction is still worthwhile.