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notes
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 Bryant
park, an 8 acre large green oasis at the
intersection of 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue is one
of the most pleasant parks in Manhattan. Even though
the park is bordered by heavily trafficked streets,
it is a very relaxing park. It has a simple but
effective design, with a large, central lawn
surrounded by trees.
From the park you have a great view on some great
architectural landmarks, including the former
American Radiator Building. Similar to some Parisian
parks like the Jardin
du Luxembourg, you can take one of the 2,000
available chairs and sit wherever you prefer.
The history of the Bryant Park starts in the 19th
century, when it was known as Reservoir square. It
was named after the Croton reservoir that was
constructed adjacent to the square in 1842. In 1853
the first American World Exposition was held here in
the Crystal Palace, a magnificent glass
construction. Five years later, the palace was
destroyed by fire. In 1884 the square was renamed
Bryant Park after  William
Cullen Bryant, a poet and lawyer. He was one of the
most influential advocates for abolition of slavery
in the United States and one of the forces behind
the creation of Central
Park.
In 1899 the Reservoir adjacent to Bryant Park was
demolished replaced by the New York Public Library.
As part of this construction which would last until
1911, terraces and kiosks were constructed at the
park.
After several decades of neglect, the park was
redesigned between 1933 and 1934 as part of the
depression-era public works project. The competition
winning design by Lusby Simpson was implemented by
Robert Moses. It featured a great lawn and hedges
which obscured the views from the surrounding
streets. Two years later, an iron fence was
constructed around the park. This design resulted in
a public space virtually cut off from the
surrounding city life. You could pass the park
unaware of
the activities within. This made it appealing for
drug addicts and in the seventies and eighties, the
park was shunned by most citizens and tourists.
In the 1970s the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation
was founded by the Rockefeller Brothers. This led to
a privately funded redesign and restoration 1988.
The redesign by landscaper architect Hanna/Olin and
garden designer Lynden B. Miller was aimed towards
restoring activity in the park. The high hedges were
replaced by shrubs opening the park up to the
streets. In 1992, the new Bryant Park was officially
opened and became an instant success. It is now one
of New York's most popular parks. In 2002 the park
became the city's first 'wireless park', which means
you can connect to the internet with a 802.11b
Ethernet card.
The park contains five statues plus the Josephine
Shaw Lowell fountain. Built in 1912 and designed by
Charles Adams Platt, this was the first monument  dedicated
to a woman. Lowell (1843-1905) was a pioneering
social reformer. In 2002 a carousel was added to the
park.
Bryant Park is hemmed in by some great landmarks. On
the east side of the park is the 1911 New
York Public Library. The magnificent
Beaux-Arts building was designed by Carrere &
Hastings. The collection contains more than 7
million books. The library's entrance is at Fifth
Avenue, from the Bryant Park you look onto the back
side of the building.
Another building of interest is the former American
Radiator building, a great 1924 skyscraper
in neo-Gothic style with Art Deco ornaments. The 22
story  tower
was designed by André Fouilhoux and Raymond Hood;
the latter is also known for the Tribune
Tower in Chicago.
Another landmark near the Bryant Park is the 1901 Bryant
Park Studios, a building on 40th street in
Beaux-Arts style. On the other side of the park is
the more modern and larger W.R. Grace
building, a sleek 50 story building
designed by SOM's Gordon Bunshaft. It was
constructed in 1974 for the W.R. Grace chemical
company.
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| Publication:The
New York Sun; |
Date:Jan
21, 2004; |
Section:Editorial
& Opinion; |
Page:8 |
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The Fall and Rise of Bryant Park
By
JULIA VITULLO-MARTIN Ms.
Vitullo-Martin is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Shrewd developers often name their buildings for
their neighborhood’s most attractive asset. In this tradition, the
Durst Organization recently announced that it was conferring the address
of One Bryant Park on its flashy new Midtown tower, whose major tenant
will be the Bank of America. On an average day in good weather, lovely,
crime-free Bryant Park is wildly popular, drawing some 5,300 visitors at
midday, or 900 people an acre.It is almost surely the most used urban
open space in the world, exceeding even St. Mark’s in Venice. The New
York Times calls it “Manhattan’s town square.”
Yet associating any new building with Bryant
Park would have been unthinkable just 20 years ago — akin to naming a
building One Needle Park, which would pretty well summarize the drug den
that was then Bryant Park. I remember this well because the Citizens
Housing and Planning Council,my former employer, had offices on West
40th Street, Bryant Park’s southern boundary. We had ringside seats
for the sordid dealing and using that went on openly in the park,
nestled behind the New York Public Library.
Entrepreneur Michael Fuchs, who was the first
chairman of HBO, which was headquartered across the park on West 42nd
Street, also remembers those days well. “It was the Wild West down
there,” he recalled recently. We had all come from uptown —
Rockefeller Center, a good neighborhood.The Bryant Park area was so bad
that people had no reason to go out.We developed a philosophy that we
would make the HBO building self-sufficient,with a great cafeteria, gym,
screenings, whatever people needed.”
In retrospect,it may be hard to grasp that city
government actually permitted the ongoing, daily degradation of such a
magnificent asset. After all,the city-owned Bryant Park wasn’t hidden
in some obscure corner, far away from official eyes. It’s been right
there since the mid-19th century. It sits squarely in the middle of
Midtown, surrounded by world-renowned landmarks. For example, the
gorgeous Beaux-Arts New York Public Library, which opened in 1911 and
uses two acres of Bryant Park,was designed by Carrère & Hastings.
Raymond Hood’s 1924 neo-Gothic American Radiator building, on West
40th Street, now the Bryant Park Hotel, is regarded by many architects
as the finest building in New York.
The Beaux-Arts Bryant Park Studios Building,
which opened in 1901, was built for a New York artist who had just
returned from Paris,bringing with him the French emphasis on natural
northern light.He commissioned lavish double-height workshop/residential
studios with huge windows to capture the unobstructed light from Bryant
Park.Yet in 1979,things were such a mess that the eminent
urbanist,William Whyte,wrote about Bryant Park, “If you went out and
hired the dope dealers,you couldn’t get a more villainous crew to show
the urgency of the situation.”
Bryant Park had 150 reported robberies and 10
rapes annually, countless auto break-ins on the periphery, and a murder
every other year. As a public park it was so mismanaged that it held
down the property values of the surrounding neighborhood.
Today Bryant Park pumps up property values. Bank
of America Senior Vice President John Saclarides says about the new
tower, “Because of Bryant Park, we anticipate great employee happiness
with our site. We think our employees will use the park for visitation,
for reading, and for a remote office at lunch time.” (The park now has
free wireless fidelity Web access, known as “wi fi.”) What happened?
In 1980 a group of civic-minded New Yorkers,
property owners, and neighbors decided to rescue the park, and set up
the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation. They spent seven years
negotiating with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation
before they succeeded in getting a 15-year lease, which began in 1988.
(The lease was subsequently renewed for another five years.) The BPRC
immediately closed the park for five years of rebuilding.
The old design — a formal French garden —
had dated from 1934, when Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, New York’s
master of public works, decided to elevate and isolate the park above
the sidewalk. Instead of making Bryant Park an elegant respite from the
congestion of midtown as intended,the isolationist design deterred
desirable users while attracting undesirable users.
The new BPRC design aimed to re-people the park
while raising revenues to pay for the expensive planned maintenance of
several million dollars annually — far more than the city spent. The
designers cut new entrances, tore down the iron fencing, ripped out high
hedges, restored the fixtures, and added neoclassical kiosks for
concessions.
Fixed benches were replaced with some 3,200
movable, pretty French chairs and 500 tables, providing what Mr.
Biederman calls “freemarket seating.” The park’s Upper Terrace,
which had been its most active drug market, was leased to the trendy
Bryant Park Grill, which became an instant hot spot.
High standards of behavior are enforced by the
security officers,whom Mr.Biederman calls “friendly but firm.”They
deter “little pieces of disorder,” as Mr. Biederman calls
misdemeanors. The old laissez-faire attitude toward disruptive behavior
is gone. Neighboring business people and property owners are overjoyed.
The chairman of Mountain Development
Corporation, which owns the now-landmarked Bryant Park Studios, Robert
Lieb, recalled that crime was so bad in 1980 that his building could
only be marketed by promising strong private security.“The park should
have been a positive for us, but the drug dealing and crime made it a
negative,” he said.
Today,he says,his company doesn’t even have to
work to rent space.“Our tenants,boutique designers, and manufacturers
who specialize in sales to stores like Barney’s and Nordstrom’s,
want to be on the park.”Tenants include hip designers like Theory and
Angel Zimick.
“Bryant Park proves that if you build
something beautiful that people can enjoy,”Mr.Lieb said. “They will
pay a premium price to be there.”And,indeed,rents soared to the
mid-50s today from $14 a square foot in 1980.
Perhaps best of all, taxpayers aren’t footing
the bill for the park’s $4 million annual budget, which is all
privately raised.While $5 million of the $18 million spent on capital
improvements came from public funds, no public money has been spent on
the park since 1996. It may well be the only urban park in the world
supported by neither government nor charitable funds.
“Because this park is integral to the
functioning of Midtown, we ask commercial interests and users to pay for
it,” Mr. Biederman said.
Bryant Park’s successful privatization is a
tribute to a selfless innovation by the public sector — permitting the
private sector to step in with resources and operational skills to
restore and manage a splendid public space.Most public officials
wouldn’t have had the courage to let the private sector take over.
New York taxpayers owe heartfelt thanks to the
four mayors, beginning with Edward Koch, and the four parks
commissioners, finishing with Adrian Benepe, who made this happen. |
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This area was set aside as early as 1686
for public use; from 1823 to 1840, like many of Manhattan's parks, it was
used as a pauper's graveyard. In 1842, the Croton Reservoir was built on
the east side of the space, where the New York Public Library is now, and
the remaining land became known as Reservoir Square.
The Crystal Palace was built on the
site in 1853, a marvelous seven-story exhibition space made of glass and
cast iron that housed America's first world's fair before burning down
spectacularly on October 5, 1858.
After serving as a parade ground for Union
troops during the Civil War, Reservoir Square was designated a park in
1871, and was renamed in 1884 for William
Cullen Bryant, poet, lawyer, New York Post editor, abolitionist
and park advocate. It was not much of a park, though, until it was
landscaped in French garden style in the 1930s, the object of a contest
for unemployed architects.
By the 1970s, the park had become chiefly
known as a drug market, but since a re-landscaping in 1992 occasioned by
the creation of underground stacks for the library, it's become a highly
valued urban space. It's the venue for popular outdoor movies in the
summer.
Sculptures in the park include an imposing
Bryant, Goethe, Gertrude Stein, copper maganate and YMCA founder William
Dodge (by John Quincy Adams Ward; (originally in Herald Square) and
Brazilian liberator Jose de Andrada --not to mention Big Crinkly by
Alexander Calder.
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