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They live in a peep show.
Residents of apartments along the newly opened stretch of the High Line say they feel like zoo animals, constantly photographed and gawked at while trying to go about their daily lives.
“Its absolutely horrible!” fumed Ronni McFadden, who resides in an apartment eye-level to the walkway at West 23rd Street and Tenth Avenue.
“People take pictures and wave at you when you’re alone in your home. We have to keep dark shades up all the time. It’s voyeuristic, and there’s zero privacy. It’s just really embarrassing.”
The greenway’s newest extension opened in June and slices through a cramped residential neighborhood from 20th to 30th streets on Manhattan’s far West Side. Some apartments are so close, you could jump from the fire escape to the former rail trestle.
“It’s a mixed bag,” said Carlos Santiago, 42, who lives on the third floor of a walk-up at 28th Street and Tenth Avenue.
“It’s a great view, but we can’t enjoy it because we have to keep the shades down at all times, and one of the best things about the apartment was the light.
“We can only open the shades after 11 p.m., when the park closes.”
Santiago said he installed an alarm system after the High Line opened because of safety concerns.
Residents with a more exhibitionist streak, however, are thrilled by their proximity to a promenade that attracted 2 million visitors last year.
“I sit on my fire escape and have a beer, and everyone takes my picture and waves to me when they’re walking by,” said Christina Olenick, 23, a waitress on 28th Street, where two-bedroom units rent for $2,200 a month. “They take pictures of me, but I stare at them, too. I wave back.”
Olenick, who shares the small rental with two roommates, has a “Keep Out” sign taped to her window to remind parkgoers not to pet the humans, and her boyfriend has warned her to keep the shades down when she’s home to avoid attracting stalkers, she said.
Corcoran broker Neil Levine said he made his former apartment in the high-end condo Vesta24, which overlooks the High Line at 24th Street, work with “ecru-colored blackout shades so you can see out but they can’t see in.”
High Line spokeswoman Kate Lindquist said the park’s creators “sympathize with those few who may feel they live a little too close. This is one of those tough issues that comes up when you’re introducing new green space in a dense, urban environment like New York City.”
The rule of thumb among brokers is that an ideal apartment “should skim the leaves of the park so you get the greenery plus the skyline,” said Leonard Steinberg, a broker at Prudential Douglas Elliman.
“But the High Line isn’t that kind of a park. There are no treetops. Those apartments on the High Line are more like the maisonettes on ground-level of Park Avenue, which are top dollar.”