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Bryant Park is a 9.603 acre (39,000 m²) public park located in New York City. It is bounded by Fifth Avenue, Sixth Avenue (officially, Avenue of the Americas), 40th Street and 42nd Street in Midtown Manhattan. The central building of the New York Public Library is in the park. Although part of the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, Bryant Park is managed by a private not-for-profit corporation, the Bryant Park Corporation.
While it was still a wilderness, New York's colonial governor Thomas Dongan designated the area now known as Bryant Park as a public space in 1686. George Washington's troops crossed the area while retreating from the Battle of Long Island in 1776. Bryant Park was a potter's field (a graveyard for the poor) from 1823 to 1840, when thousands of bodies were moved to Ward's Island.
The first park at this site opened in 1847 as Reservoir Square. It was named after its neighbor, the Croton Distributing Reservoir. In 1853, the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations with the New York Crystal Palace, with thousands of exhibitors, took place in the park.
The square was used for military drills during the American Civil War, and was the site of some of the New York Draft Riots of July 1863, when the Colored Orphan Asylum at Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street was burned down.
In 1884 Reservoir Square was renamed Bryant Park, to honor the New York Evening Post editor and abolitionist William Cullen Bryant. In 1899 the Reservoir building and construction of the New York Public Library building began. Terraces public facilities, and kiosks were added to the park.
However the construction of the Sixth Avenue Elevated railway in 1878 had cast a literal and metaphorical shadow over the park, and by the 1930s the park had suffered neglect and was considered disreputable. The park was re-designed in 1933-1934 as a Great Depression public works project under the leadership of Robert Moses. The new park featured a great lawn, and also added hedges and later an iron fence in order to separate the park from the surrounding city streets. The park was temporarily degraded in the late 1930s by the tearing down of the El and the construction of the IND Sixth Avenue Line subway.
By the 1970s Bryant Park had been taken over by drug dealers, prostitutes and the homeless. It was nicknamed "Needle Park" by some due to its brisk heroin trade, and was considered a "no-go zone" by ordinary citizens and visitors. From 1979 to 1983, a coordinated program of amenities, including a bookmarket, a flower market, cafes, landscape improvements, and entertainment activities, was initiated by a parks advocacy group called the Parks Council and immediately brought new life to the park -- an effort continued over the succeeding years by The Bryant Park Restoration Corporation, which had been founded in 1980 by a group of prominent New Yorkers, including members of the Rockefeller family, to improve conditions in the park. In 1988 a privately funded re-design and restoration was begun by the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation under the leadership of Daniel A. Biederman, with the goal of opening up the park to the streets and encouraging activity within it.
In 1992 the new Bryant Park re-opened and was an instant and spectacular success, immediately attracting local workers and tourists to it.
Bryant Park now has a Parisian feel, and has been compared to Jardin du Luxembourg. When re-opened the re-designed garden was planted as an English style perennial border in tones of whites, pinks, and blues. Three thousand movable green chairs and five hundred tables are available for sitting in the park.
On days when the weather is nice, Bryant Park is a popular spot for area office workers to eat lunch. Several dining spots are located in the park, including Bryant Park Grill, Bryant Park Café and 'wichcraft.
In the summer of 2002, the Bryant Park Wireless Network was launched, allowing free WiFi internet access within the park. More than 50,000 users per year use this feature.
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