Hudson Yards’ vessel sculpture will reopen with netting after suicides

NEW YORK — 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 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 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 spokesperson for Related Cos., 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.

On Saturday morning, tourists craned their necks against the chilly wind to take in views of the massive, brassy art piece. Although it was still closed, a careful look at its third floor showed an initial section of the upcoming changes: black mesh, resembling a fish net.

The scalable Vessel, created by designer Thomas Heatherwick and Heatherwick Studio, forms the heart of the $25 billion Hudson Yards project, which was the largest private development in American history when it first opened. But even before the Vessel was finished, critics voiced concerns about safety.

In 2016, an associate editor of The Architect’s Newspaper, Audrey Wachs, wrote that “as one climbs up Vessel, the railings stay just above waist height all the way up to the structure’s top, but when you build high, folks will jump.”