Description NYC Skyline seen from Bryant ParkBryant Park is a 9.603 acre (39,000 m) privately-managed public park located in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is bounded by Fifth Avenue, Sixth Avenue, 40th Street and 42nd Street in Midtown Manhattan.[1] The central building of the New York Public Library is in the park. Although part of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, Bryant Park is managed by a private not-for-profit corporation, the Bryant Park Corporation.HistoryIn 1686 when the area was still a wilderness, New York's colonial governor Thomas Dongan designated the area now known as Bryant Park as a public space. 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.[2]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.[2]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.[2]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 was removed 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 leaders