Bryant Park
The ground between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, Fortieth and Forty-second Streets, now occupied by Bryant Park and the old reservoir, was purchased by the city in 1822, and in 1823 a Potter's Field was established there, the one in Washington Square having been abandoned in its favor. The reservoir, of Egyptian architecture, was finished in 1842. Its cost was about $500,000. On July 5th water was introduced into it through the new Croton aqueduct, with appropriate ceremonies. The water is brought from the Croton lakes, forty-five miles above the city, through conduits of solid masonry. The first conduit, which was begun in 1835, is carried across the Harlem River through the High Bridge, which was erected especially to accommodate it. At the time the reservoir was put in use the locality was at the northern limits of the city. On Sundays and holidays people went on journeys to the reservoir, and from the promenades at the top of the structure had a good view from river to river, and of the city to the south. The reservoir has not been in use for many years.
The park was called Reservoir Square until 1884, when the name was changed to Bryant Park.
A World's Fair
On July 4, 1853, a World's Fair, in imitation of the Crystal Palace, near London, was opened in Reservoir Square, when President Pierce made an address. The fair was intended to set forth the products of the world, but it attracted but little attention outside the city. It was opened as a permanent exposition on May 14, 1854, but proved a failure. One of the attractions was a tower 280 feet high, which stood just north of the present line of Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue. In August, 1856, it was burned, and as a great pillar of flame it attracted more attention than ever before. The exposition buildings and their contents were in the hands of a receiver when they were destroyed by fire October 5, 1858.
Bryant Park has been selected as the site for the future home of the consolidated Tilden, Astor and Lenox Libraries.
Murray Hill
Murray Hill derives its name from the possessions of Robert Murray, whose house, Inclenberg, stood at the corner of what is now Thirty-sixth Street and Park Avenue, on a farm which lay between the present Thirty-third and Thirty-seventh Streets, Bloomingdale Road (now Broadway) and the Boston Post Road (the present Third Avenue). The house was destroyed by fire in 1834. On September 15, 1776, after the defeat on Long Island, the Americans were marching northward from the lower end of the island, when the British, marching toward the west, reached the Murray House. There the officers were well entertained by the Murrays, who, at the same time, managed to get word to the American Army: the latter hurried on and joined Washington at about Forty-third Street and Broadway, before the English suspected that they were anywhere within reach.
The Murray Farm extended down to Kip's Bay at Thirty-sixth Street. The Kip mansion was the oldest house on the Island of Manhattan when it was torn down in 1851. Where it stood, at the crossing of Thirty-fifth Street and Second Avenue, there is now not a trace. Jacob Kip built the house in 1655, of brick which he imported from Holland. The locality between the Murray Hill Farm and the river, that is, east of what is now Third Avenue between Thirty-third and Thirty-seventh Streets, was called Kipsborough in Revolutionary times.