Bryant Park, New York - attractions, tourist attractions, city attractions, area attractions, main attractions, major attractions, landmarks, sights, poin

by Fifth Avenue, Sixth Avenue,
40th Street and 42nd
New York, NY 10019

As far back as 1686, New York’s colonial governor Thomas Dongan designated as public property the land that is now Bryant Park. The area was still wilderness, and the hunting grounds of Native Americans. At the start of the Revolutionary War, in 1776, General Washington’s troops, after being routed by the British in the Battle of Long Island, raced across Manhattan, traversing the future site of Bryant Park. The city established a potter’s field on the site in 1823. The site of Bryant Park is in a part of Manhattan that was countryside well north of the populous city until nearly the middle of the nineteenth century. The city decommissioned the potter’s field in 1840, when it was apparent that this countryside would soon be consumed by “urban sprawl.”