Pier 55 Is Dead

Unlike Garden Bridge, whose demise occurred when Mayor of London Sadiq Khan pulled public funding for the controversial project, Pier 55's end is marked by the withdrawal of funding from its main private donor: Barry Diller. The billionaire head of IAC (whose Frank Gehry-designed headquarters is just a few blocks from the site of Pier 55) unveiled the project in November 2014. The public-private partnership would have provided a public park and performance space on a new pier as an extension of the Hudson River Park. Heatherwick's design lifted the park, designed with Mathews Nielsen, upon 300 mushroom-cap columns sunk into the riverbed.

With Diller providing $130 million of the project's anticipated $170 million budget, money was not an issue – at least not for the city, which backed the project. But lawsuits ​funded by fellow NYC billionaire Douglas Durst and escalating costs that brought the project up to $250 million led Diller to pull his funding. Although construction of the bridge structure leading to the park had started, without his money the bridge's columns will join the crumbling industrial piers around them as relics in the river.