Hudson Yards ‘Vessel’ Sculpture Will Reopen With Netting After Suicides
The New York Times
The 150-foot-high tourist attraction, which closed in 2021, will be fitted with mesh to stop people from jumping.
Nearly three years after a series of suicides shut down the Vessel, the 150-foot-tall centerpiece of the Hudson Yards complex in Manhattan, the project’s developer said on Friday that it would reopen this year with new safety measures.
The beehive-shaped sculpture, with a labyrinth of about 2,500 steps and 80 landings, opened in 2019, along with much of the rest of Hudson Yards, a gleaming development in Midtown West. Not long after, in February 2020, a 19-year-old, Peter DeSalvo III, died by suicide there.
Over the next year and a half, three others died by suicide there as well, including a 14-year-old boy in 2021, prompting the developers to close off access to the stairs.
The attraction will reopen once “floor-to-ceiling steel mesh” has been installed on several staircases, said Kathleen Corless, a spokeswoman for Related Companies, the developer of Hudson Yards. The measure will preserve the “unique experience that has drawn millions of visitors from around the globe,” the company said in a statement.
The reopening, first reported by The New York Post, will take place sometime this year.
