Bryant Park
Encyclopedia
Park
A park is a protected area, in its natural or semi-natural state, or planted, and set aside for human recreation and enjoyment, or for the protection of wildlife or natural habitats. It may consist of rocks, soil, water, flora and fauna and grass areas. Many parks are legally protected by...
located in the New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
borough
Borough (New York City)
New York City, one of the largest cities in the world, is composed of five boroughs. Each borough now has the same boundaries as the county it is in. County governments were dissolved when the city consolidated in 1898, along with all city, town, and village governments within each county...
of Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
. It is located between Fifth
Fifth Avenue (Manhattan)
Fifth Avenue is a major thoroughfare in the center of the borough of Manhattan in New York City, New York, United States. The section of Fifth Avenue that crosses Midtown Manhattan, especially that between 49th Street and 60th Street, is lined with prestigious shops and is consistently ranked among...
and Sixth
Sixth Avenue (Manhattan)
Sixth Avenue – officially Avenue of the Americas, although this name is seldom used by New Yorkers – is a major thoroughfare in New York City's borough of Manhattan, on which traffic runs northbound, or "uptown"...
Avenues and between 40th and 42nd
42nd Street (Manhattan)
42nd Street is a major crosstown street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, known for its theaters, especially near the intersection with Broadway at Times Square. It is also the name of the region of the theater district near that intersection...
Streets in Midtown Manhattan
Midtown Manhattan
Midtown Manhattan, or simply Midtown, is an area of Manhattan, New York City home to world-famous commercial zones such as Rockefeller Center, Broadway, and Times Square...
. Although technically the main building of the New York Public Library
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
is located within the park, effectively it forms the park's functional eastern boundary, making Sixth Avenue the park's primary entrance. Although part of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation
New York City Department of Parks and Recreation
The City of New York Department of Parks & Recreation is the department of government of the City of New York responsible for maintaining the city's parks system, preserving and maintaining the ecological diversity of the city's natural areas, and furnishing recreational opportunities for city's...
, Bryant Park is managed by a private not-for-profit corporation, the Bryant Park Corporation.
History
In 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 WashingtonGeorge Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
's troops crossed the area while retreating from the Battle of Long Island
Battle of Long Island
The Battle of Long Island, also known as the Battle of Brooklyn or the Battle of Brooklyn Heights, fought on August 27, 1776, was the first major battle in the American Revolutionary War following the United States Declaration of Independence, the largest battle of the entire conflict, and the...
in 1776. Beginning in 1823, Bryant Park was designated a potter's field
Potter's field
A potter's field was an American term for a place for the burial of unknown or indigent people. The expression derives from the Bible, referring to a field used for the extraction of potter's clay, which was useless for agriculture but could be used as a burial site.-Origin:The term comes from...
(a graveyard for the poor) and remained so until 1840, when thousands of bodies were moved to Wards Island.
The first park at this site opened in 1847 as Reservoir Square. It was named after its neighbor, the Croton Distributing Reservoir
Croton Distributing Reservoir
The Croton Distributing Reservoir, also known as the Murray Hill Reservoir, was an above-ground reservoir at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It supplied the city with drinking water during the 19th century. The reservoir was a man-made lake in area,...
. In 1853, the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations
Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations
Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations was a World's Fair held in 1853 in New York City, in the wake of the highly successful 1851 Great Exhibition in London. It aimed to showcase the new industrial achievements of the world and also to demonstrate the nationalistic pride of a relatively young...
with the New York Crystal Palace
New York Crystal Palace
New York Crystal Palace was an exhibition building constructed for the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations in New York City in 1853, which was under the presidency of Mayor Jacob Aaron Westervelt...
, featuring thousands of exhibitors, took place in the park.
The square was used for military drills during the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, and was the site of some of the New York Draft Riots
New York Draft Riots
The New York City draft riots were violent disturbances in New York City that were the culmination of discontent with new laws passed by Congress to draft men to fight in the ongoing American Civil War. The riots were the largest civil insurrection in American history apart from the Civil War itself...
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
William Cullen Bryant
William Cullen Bryant was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the New York Evening Post.-Youth and education:...
. In 1899, the Reservoir building was removed and construction of the New York Public Library building began. Terraces
Terrace (gardening)
In gardening, a terrace is an element where a raised flat paved or gravelled section overlooks a prospect. A raised terrace keeps a house dry and provides a transition between the hard materials of the architecture and softer ones of the garden.-History:...
, public facilities, and kiosk
Kiosk
Kiosk is a small, separated garden pavilion open on some or all sides. Kiosks were common in Persia, India, Pakistan, and in the Ottoman Empire from the 13th century onward...
s were added to the park.
However the construction of the Sixth Avenue Elevated
IRT Sixth Avenue Line
The IRT Sixth Avenue Line, often called the Sixth Avenue Elevated or Sixth Avenue El, was the second elevated railway in Manhattan in New York City, following the Ninth Avenue Elevated. In addition to its transportation role, it also captured the imagination of artists and poets.The line ran south...
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
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
public works
Public works
Public works are a broad category of projects, financed and constructed by the government, for recreational, employment, and health and safety uses in the greater community...
project under the leadership of Robert Moses
Robert Moses
Robert Moses was the "master builder" of mid-20th century New York City, Long Island, Rockland County, and Westchester County, New York. As the shaper of a modern city, he is sometimes compared to Baron Haussmann of Second Empire Paris, and is one of the most polarizing figures in the history of...
. The new park featured a great lawn, and added hedges and later an iron fence 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
IND Sixth Avenue Line
The Sixth Avenue Line is a rapid transit line of the B Division of the New York City Subway in the United States. It runs mainly under Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, and continues south through the Rutgers Street Tunnel to Brooklyn...
subway.
On October 15, 1969, a rally attended by 40,000 people was held in Bryant Park as part of the nationwide Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam
Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam
The Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam was a large demonstration against the United States involvement in the Vietnam War that took place across the United States on October 15, 1969. The Moratorium developed from Jerome Grossman's April 20, 1969, call for a general strike if the war had not...
. Speakers at that event were John Lindsay
John Lindsay
John Vliet Lindsay was an American politician, lawyer and broadcaster who was a U.S. Congressman, Mayor of New York City, candidate for U.S...
, Eugene McCarthy
Eugene McCarthy
Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy was an American politician, poet, and a long-time member of the United States Congress from Minnesota. He served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1949 to 1959 and the U.S. Senate from 1959 to 1971.In the 1968 presidential election, McCarthy was the first...
, William Sloane Coffin
William Sloane Coffin
William Sloane Coffin, Jr. was an American liberal Christian clergyman and long-time peace activist. He was ordained in the Presbyterian church and later received ministerial standing in the United Church of Christ....
, Woody Allen
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
, Dick Cavett
Dick Cavett
Richard Alva "Dick" Cavett is a former American television talk show host known for his conversational style and in-depth discussion of issues...
, Ben Gazzara
Ben Gazzara
-Early life:Gazzara was born Biagio Anthony Gazzara in New York City, the son of Italian immigrants Angelina and Antonio Gazzara, who was a laborer and carpenter. Gazzara grew up on New York's tough Lower East Side. He actually lived on E. 29th Street and participated in the drama program at...
, Helen Hayes
Helen Hayes
Helen Hayes Brown was an American actress whose career spanned almost 70 years. She eventually garnered the nickname "First Lady of the American Theatre" and was one of twelve people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award...
, Rod McKuen
Rod McKuen
Rod McKuen is an American poet, songwriter, composer, and singer. He was one of the best-selling poets in the United States during the late 1960s. Throughout his career, McKuen produced a wide range of recordings, which included popular music, spoken word poetry, film soundtracks, and classical music...
, Shirley Maclaine
Shirley MacLaine
Shirley MacLaine is an American film and theater actress, singer, dancer, activist and author, well-known for her beliefs in new age spirituality and reincarnation. She has written a large number of autobiographical works, many dealing with her spiritual beliefs as well as her Hollywood career...
, Tony Randall
Tony Randall
Tony Randall was a U.S. actor, comic, producer and director.-Early years:Randall was born Arthur Leonard Rosenberg to a Jewish family in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the son of Julia and Mogscha Rosenberg, an art and antiques dealer...
, Eli Wallach
Eli Wallach
Eli Herschel Wallach is an American film, television and stage actor, who gained fame in the late 1950s. For his performance in Baby Doll he won a BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer and a Golden Globe nomination. One of his most famous roles is that of Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly...
; among the musical performers were Judy Collins
Judy Collins
Judith Marjorie "Judy" Collins is an American singer and songwriter, known for her eclectic tastes in the material she records ; and for her social activism. She is an alumna of the University of Colorado.-Musical career:Collins was born and raised in Seattle, Washington...
, Peter, Paul and Mary
Peter, Paul and Mary
Peter, Paul and Mary were an American folk-singing trio whose nearly 50-year career began with their rise to become a paradigm for 1960s folk music. The trio was composed of Peter Yarrow, Paul Stookey and Mary Travers...
and the Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
cast of the musical Hair
Hair (musical)
Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. A product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement...
. Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad
Tony Conrad is an American avant-garde video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician/composer, sound artist, teacher and writer...
captured the event live from the window of his 42nd Street apartment and published the recording on the album Bryant Park Moratorium Rally.
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
Rockefeller family
The Rockefeller family , the Cleveland family of John D. Rockefeller and his brother William Rockefeller , is an American industrial, banking, and political family of German origin that made one of the world's largest private fortunes in the oil business during the late 19th and early 20th...
, 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 Dan Biederman
Dan Biederman
Daniel A. Biederman is a prominent New York City downtown manager and pioneer in the field of privately funded urban and public space management. He is the co-founder of Grand Central Partnership, 34th Street Partnership, and Bryant Park Corporation, three Business Improvement Districts ...
, with the goal of opening up the park to the streets and encouraging activity within it.
Bryant Park Corporation
The Bryant Park Restoration Corporation (changed to Bryant Park Corporation (BPC) in 2006) was co-founded in 1980 by Dan BiedermanDan Biederman
Daniel A. Biederman is a prominent New York City downtown manager and pioneer in the field of privately funded urban and public space management. He is the co-founder of Grand Central Partnership, 34th Street Partnership, and Bryant Park Corporation, three Business Improvement Districts ...
and Andrew Heiskell
Andrew Heiskell
Andrew Heiskell was chairman and CEO of Time Inc. , and also known for his philanthropy, including for the New York Public Library...
, Chairman of Time Inc.
Time Inc.
Time Inc. is a subsidiary of the media conglomerate Time Warner, the company formed by the 1990 merger of the original Time Inc. and Warner Communications. It publishes 130 magazines, most notably its namesake, Time...
and the New York Public Library
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
. Initially supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund
Rockefeller Brothers Fund
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund , , is an international philanthropic organisation created and run by members of the Rockefeller family. It was set up in New York City in 1940 as the primary philanthropic vehicle of the five famous Rockefeller brothers: John D...
, BPC is now funded by assessments on property and businesses adjacent to the park, and by revenue generated from events held at the park. BPC is the largest U.S. effort to provide private management, with private funding, to a public park.
By the 1970s, Bryant Park had become a dangerous haven because of drug dealers and was widely seen as a symbol of New York City’s decline. BPC immediately brought significant changes that made the park once again a place that people wanted to visit. Biederman, a proponent of the "Broken Windows Theory" expounded by James Q. Wilson
James Q. Wilson
James Q. Wilson is an American academic political scientist and an authority on public administration. He is a professor and senior fellow at the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy at Boston College....
and George L. Kelling
George L. Kelling
George L. Kelling is an American criminologist, Professor at Rutgers University, a Research Fellow at Harvard University, and an Adjunct Fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He previously taught at Northeastern University....
in a seminal 1982 article in Atlantic Monthly, instituted a rigorous program to clean the park, remove graffiti
Graffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....
and repair the broken physical plant. BPC also created a private security staff to confront unlawful behavior immediately.
After initial successes, BPC closed the park in 1988 to undertake a four-year project to build new park entrances with increased visibility from the street, to enhance the formal French garden design (with a lush redesign by Lynden Miller), and to improve and repair paths and lighting. BPC’s plan also included restoring of the park’s monuments, and renovating its long-closed restrooms, and building two restaurant pavilions and four concession kiosks.
Biederman worked with William H. Whyte
William H. Whyte
William Hollingsworth "Holly" Whyte was an American urbanist, organizational analyst, journalist and people-watcher.Whyte was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania in 1917 and died in New York City in 1999. An early graduate of St. Andrew's School in Middletown, Delaware, he graduated from Princeton...
, the American sociologist and distinguished observer of public space. Whyte’s influence led Biederman to implement two decisions essential to making the park the successful public space that it is. First, Biederman insisted on placing movable chairs in the park. Whyte had long believed that movable chairs give people a sense of empowerment, allowing them to sit wherever and in whatever orientation they desire. The second decision was to lower the park itself. Until 1988, Bryant Park had been elevated from the street and further isolated by tall hedges, a design conducive to illegal activity. The 1988 renovation lowered the park to nearly street level and tore out the hedges.
Paul Goldberger
Paul Goldberger is the Architecture Critic for The New Yorker, where since 1997 he has written the magazine's celebrated "Sky Line" column. He also holds the Joseph Urban Chair in Design and Architecture at The New School in New York City...
, the renovation was lauded not only for its architectural excellence, but also for adhering to Whyte's vision. "He understood that the problem of Bryant Park was its perception as an enclosure cut off from the city; he knew that, paradoxically, people feel safer when not cut off from the city, and that they feel safer in the kind of public space they think they have some control over." The renovation was lauded as "The Best Example of Urban Renewal
Urban renewal
Urban renewal is a program of land redevelopment in areas of moderate to high density urban land use. Renewal has had both successes and failures. Its modern incarnation began in the late 19th century in developed nations and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s – under the rubric of...
" by the magazine New York
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...
, and was described by Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
as a "small miracle". Many awards followed, including a Design Merit Award from Landscape Architecture Magazine, which noted that the park was "colorful and comfortable....and safe". In 1996, the Urban Land Institute
Urban Land Institute
The Urban Land Institute, or ULI, is a non-profit research and education organization with offices in Washington, D.C., Hong Kong, and London...
(ULI) honored BPC with an Award for Excellence. ULI remarked that the renovation "turned a disaster into an asset, dramatically improved the neighborhood, and pushed up office rents and occupancy rates."
The park's restrooms have won lavish praise and provide New Yorkers with a rare commodity: luxurious public facilities open to everyone. A second renovation solidified their status as, in the words of NYC Parks commissioner Adrian Benepe, "the gold standard for park comfort stations."
Bryant Park today
Bryant Park is one of the signature examples of New York City's revival in the 1990s. Essentially crime-free, the park is filled with office workers on sunny weekdays, city visitors on the weekends, and revelers during the holidays. Daily attendance counts often exceed 800 people per acre, making it the most densely occupied urban park in the world. In 1995, an article about midtown office workers who had found the newly reopened park a good place to go to after work bore the headline "Town Square of Midtown" and the moniker has stuck. In the early 2000s, BPC added a custom-built carousel and revived the tradition of an open-air library, The Reading Room, which also hosts literary events. The Bryant Park Grill and Bryant Park Cafe have become popular after-work spots, and 'wichcraft, the sandwich chain owned by Tom ColicchioTom Colicchio
Thomas Patrick "Tom" Colicchio is an American celebrity chef. He co-founded the Gramercy Tavern in New York City, and formerly served as a co-owner and as the executive chef. He is also the founder of Craft and Colicchio & Sons restaurants...
, operates four kiosks on the park's west end.
In the summer of 2002, the park launched the free Bryant Park Wireless Network, making the park the first in NYC to offer free Wi-Fi access
Hotspot (Wi-Fi)
A hotspot is a site that offers Internet access over a wireless local area network through the use of a router connected to a link to an Internet service provider...
to visitors. Improvements in 2008 significantly increased the number of users who could log-on at a given time.
Lawn
One of the park's most impressive features is a large lawn that is the longest expanse of grass in Manhattan south of Central Park. Besides serving as a "lunchroom" for midtown office workers and a place of respite for tired pedestrians, the lawn also serves as the seating area for some of the park's major events, such as the HBO/Bryant Park Summer Film Festival. The lawn's season since 2005 has lasted from shortly after the fall fashion showsNew York Fashion Week
The semi-annual New York Fashion Week, branded Mercedes-Benz FashionWeek in 2009, is held in February and September of each year in New York City. It is one of four major fashion weeks held around the world .-History:The first New York Fashion Week, then called Press Week, was the world's first...
in February until October, when it is closed to make way for Citi Pond, the park's ice skating rink. During the lawn's season, it is open on most days, closing only for regular maintenance, to drain after a heavy rain, or to recover after high-impact events. From 1992 through 2009, the lawn's season was interrupted for three weeks in September by the spring fashion shows. In September 2010, the fashion shows will move to a new home at Lincoln Center, and the lawn will reclaim these three warm-weather weeks.
Programming
Numerous events are hosted on the Great Lawn at Bryant Park. The Bryant Park Summer Film Festival, begun in the early nineties and now sponsored by HBO, brings a very large crowd into the park on Monday evenings during the summer. Various free musical performances are sponsored by corporations during the warm weather months, including the GMA Summer Concert Series, broadcast over ABC-TV from the park on Friday mornings; Broadway in Bryant Park, sponsored by Clear Channel Communications and featuring performers from current Broadway musicals, the Music at 5 series, and, starting in 2008, Bank of America Presents New York Now, a series featuring concerts by five of New York's classical music organizations.
Since 2005, the Great Lawn has also hosted "Pinstripes in the Park", sponsored by the New York Yankees
New York Yankees
The New York Yankees are a professional baseball team based in the The Bronx, New York. They compete in Major League Baseball in the American League's East Division...
, an event featuring a live broadcast of a NY Yankee game, stadium concessions, and former Yankee greats greeting the crowd and signing autographs. The park has a chess concession at the west end that offers chess boards and lessons. There is also a court for practitioners of Pétanque
Pétanque
Pétanque is a form of boules where the goal is, while standing inside a starting circle with both feet on the ground, to throw hollow metal balls as close as possible to a small wooden ball called a cochonnet or jack. It is also sometimes called a bouchon or le petit...
, the French game of boules. Also popular are free classes in yoga, tai chi and knitting. In the summer of 2009, the Bryant Park corporation added two ping pong tables to the North West corner of the park.
Citi Pond and The Holiday Shops
In 2005 Bryant Park became a year-round destination with the introduction of Citi Pond, a free-admission ice skating rink that instantly became a fixture in the Manhattan holiday scene and that The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
has dubbed "NYC's best". Citi Pond is a complement to The Holiday Shops, a holiday market modeled on Europe's Christkindlmarkt.
Public park, privately operated
Although Bryant Park is a public park, BPC accepts no public funds, and operates the park on assessments on surrounding property within the Business Improvement DistrictBusiness improvement district
A business improvement district is a defined area within which businesses pay an additional tax or fee in order to fund improvements within the district's boundaries. Grant funds acquired by the city for special programs and/or incentives such as tax abatements can be made available to assist...
, fees from concessionaires, and revenues generated by public events. The number of events at the park has grown significantly, and this has caused some consternation by people who fear that the park will be dominated by private entities and will thus be inaccessible to the public. Biederman and BPC feel strongly that a crowded park is a successful one, and that a full slate of events is essential in drawing people to the park. They also believe that the revenue paid by sponsors of events is necessary to keep the park well-maintained. To address fears of the park being lost to the public, BPC insists that all events are free and open to the public, the exceptions being the fashion shows that take over the park in the winter and late summer. Biederman has often publicly expressed his frustration that the fashion shows, which are not under BPC's control, took over the park for two weeks twice yearly until February 2010. "They pay us a million dollars. It's a million dollars I would happily do without", he told the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
. BPC is particularly frustrated that the fashion shows dominate the park during two crucial times: in late summer, when the weather is perfect for park visitors; and in early February, necessitating the early closure of BP's popular free-admission ice-skating rink.
In popular culture
Since its restoration, Bryant Park has become a favored setting for film and television productions. The final scene of the Howard SternHoward Stern
Howard Allan Stern is an American radio personality, television host, author, and actor best known for his radio show, which was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2005. He gained wide recognition in the 1990s where he was labeled a "shock jock" for his outspoken and sometimes controversial style...
film Private Parts
Private Parts (1997 film)
Private Parts is a 1997 American biographical comedy film produced by Ivan Reitman and released by Paramount Pictures. Written by Len Blum and Michael Kalesniko, the film is an adaptation of the 1993 best-selling book of the same name by radio personality Howard Stern, who stars as himself. It...
featuring the band AC/DC
AC/DC
AC/DC are an Australian rock band, formed in 1973 by brothers Malcolm and Angus Young. Commonly classified as hard rock, they are considered pioneers of heavy metal, though they themselves have always classified their music as simply "rock and roll"...
performing in the park was shot in July 1996. At the beginning of Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters is a 1984 American science fiction comedy film directed by Ivan Reitman and written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis. The film stars Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, Harold Ramis, and Rick Moranis and follows three eccentric parapsychologists in New York City, who start a...
, Bill Murray
Bill Murray
William James "Bill" Murray is an American actor and comedian. He first gained national exposure on Saturday Night Live in which he earned an Emmy Award and later went on to star in a number of critically and commercially successful comedic films, including Caddyshack , Ghostbusters , and...
, Dan Aykroyd
Dan Aykroyd
Daniel Edward "Dan" Aykroyd, CM is a Canadian comedian, actor, screenwriter, musician, winemaker and ufologist. He was an original cast member of Saturday Night Live, an originator of The Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters and has had a long career as a film actor and screenwriter.-Early...
and Harold Ramis
Harold Ramis
Harold Allen Ramis is an American actor, director, and writer, specializing in comedy. His best-known film acting roles are as Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters and Russell Ziskey in Stripes , both of which he also co-wrote...
come running out of the library building. Chris Rock
Chris Rock
Christopher Julius "Chris" Rock III is an American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer and director. He was voted in the US as the 5th greatest stand-up comedian of all time by Comedy Central...
used the park to watch women in I Love My Wife
I Love My Wife
I Love My Wife is a musical with a book and lyrics by Michael Stewart and music by Cy Coleman, based on a play by Luis Rego.A satire of the sexual revolution of the 1970s, the musical takes place on Christmas Eve in suburban Trenton, New Jersey, where two married couples who have been close friends...
and perhaps most famously, the Sex and the City film staged multiple scenes at front of the NY Public Library (which is officially part of Bryant Park) and at the park's carousel. Law & Order
Law & Order
Law & Order is an American police procedural and legal drama television series, created by Dick Wolf and part of the Law & Order franchise. It aired on NBC, and in syndication on various cable networks. Law & Order premiered on September 13, 1990, and completed its 20th and final season on May 24,...
is among the television series using the park for scenes. During an episode of Hana Yori Dango Returns
Hana Yori Dango Returns (TV series)
Hana Yori Dango Returns is a Japanese television drama series, broadcast on TBS in 2007. It is the sequel to 2005 Hana Yori Dango TV series, based on Japanese shōjo manga series, , written by Yoko Kamio, and followed by movie adaptation Hana Yori Dango Final.-Synopsis:Hana Yori Dango returns for...
, the lead female character Makino runs past Bryant Park as she chases a bag snatcher. On the fashion design TV show Project Runway
Project Runway
Project Runway is an American reality television series on Lifetime Television, previously on the Bravo network, which focuses on fashion design and is hosted by model Heidi Klum. The contestants compete with each other to create the best clothes and are restricted in time, materials and theme...
, the final three designers showed their final collections at Fashion Week in Bryant Park. In the summer of 2009, the movie Morning Glory
Morning Glory (2010 film)
Morning Glory is a 2010 American comedy-drama film directed by Roger Michell, produced by J.J. Abrams and written by Aline Brosh McKenna. It stars Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton, Patrick Wilson and Jeff Goldblum. After some delays, the film was released in the United States on November...
, staring Harrison Ford and Rachel McAdams, shot several scenes in Bryant Park.