NEW YORK— For a disused, decrepit urban-industrial short-line railroad structure, the High Line is doing okay. After media mogul Barry Diller — whose corporate headquarters overlooks the elevated tracks on New York’s far West Side — and his wife, designer Diane von Furstenberg, pledged up to $10 million in a matching grant to help convert the railway into a strolling park above a thriving gallery district, there was an A-list party to honor him and other donors shortly before the first part of the facility opens to the public.

As the likes of designers Donna Karan, Ralph Lauren, and Oscar de la Renta mingled with Hollywood’s Mike Nichols, Susan Sarandon, and Harvey Weinstein, television’s Jerry Seinfeld, and the Dillers, there was a speech by Joshua David, co-founder of Friends of the High Line. David was talking about the $50 million needed to complete the project, of which only $24 million was in place before Diller’s offer, when a tall, elegant woman in a dress that wasn’t as long as she was approached the microphone and whispered something into the speaker’s ear. As the assemblage wondered what the interruption might be, David surrendered the microphone to the woman, who introduced herself as Lisa Maria Falcone. She and her husband Philip, a billionaire hedge-fund manager, had decided to donate $10 million of their own, triggering the entire matching grant from Mr. Diller and getting the project to $44 million from $24 million faster than any freight train ever ran on the High Line.

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