ABSTRACT
Located between 40th and 42nd Streets, and between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, Bryant Park shares two midtown Manhattan blocks with the New York Public Library. There have been five distinct phases in the history of the park. It came under the City’s jurisdiction in 1822 and was used as a potter’s field until 1840. From 1842 it contained the 4-acre above-ground Croton Reservoir until its demolition in 1899 to allow construction of the Library. It was completely re designed in the 1930s, and completely renovated between 1988 and 1992. 1 That renovation followed transfer of the park to private management and transformed it from a forbidding haven for drug dealers – referred to as ‘Needle Park’ – into the most intensively used public open space in midtown Manhattan. The recovery of Bryant Park symbolized the revitalization of New York in the 1990s.
