Visitors will once again be able to walk up The Vessel, Thomas Heatherwick‘s gleaming sculpture at Hudson Yards in New York City, after several suicides closed public access in 2021.
The structure reopened on Monday after the installation of floor-to-ceiling steel mesh barriers in its upper level sections. The top level will stay off limits to visitors and tickets are required, according to the Associated Press, which first reported the news.
“Not a day goes by that we don’t have visitors walking up to our staff asking where they can buy tickets and when it will reopen,” Related Companies CEO Jeff T. Blau said in a prepared statement. “That interest hasn’t diminished during the time we’ve been closed and we’re excited to welcome guests from all around the world back to Vessel with additional safety measures in place.”
The real estate firm Related Companies, which owns Hudson Yards, commissioned the 16-story copper sculpture in 2016. The initial budget was $75 million before growing to a reported $200 million.
As art critic Andrew Russeth described it in Art in America earlier this year, “It looks alien and a little menacing, like a digital creation clicked and dragged from a computer screen into real life. It is vacuous in its celebration of vertigo-inducing capital and private ambition, and even though it closes to visitors not long thereafter, in May 2021, it has to rank as one of the defining architectural projects—one of the defining artworks—of the era.”
Heatherwick’s stair-focused design was intended to fatigue visitors. It was also found not to be accessible for people with disabilities, a violation of federal law. In 2019, New York prosecutors required the installation of a platform lift mechanism.
Despite this omission, nicknames, and being compared to a shawarma, The Vessel became a popular tourist attraction.
Access to The Vessel was closed to the public in early 2021 after three people jumped from the structure and died in less than twelve months. This did not prompt the installation of barriers. Instead, the Vessel reopened that year after the addition of suicide prevention signs, enhanced security, and a ban on solo journeys up its many steps. Another closure was prompted two months later after a teen visiting the sculpture with his family fatally jumped off.
