Bryant Park on the block behind the New York Public Library, with the stacks under the lawn. Green folding chairs by the hundred on the gravel promenades under the London planes, the granite fountain playing on the upper terrace at the Sixth Avenue end, Le Carrousel turning on the south side, the reading room and the kiosks, ping pong, and the library's long rear elevation over its terrace. After dark the film screen at the west end lights up and the lawn fills with people sitting to watch. The New Yorkers hang on the library's arcade, the kiosk flanks and boards on the fountain terrace.
Bryant Park is 9.6 acres behind the library's main branch, which opened on May 23, 1911. The square was renamed in 1884 for William Cullen Bryant; the Croton Distributing Reservoir stood on the east of the site until it was demolished by 1900, and the New York Crystal Palace held the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations there in 1853 and burned down in 1858. Robert Moses's redesign began in February 1934 and the park reopened on September 15, 1934. It closed for renovation on July 11, 1988 and soft reopened on April 21, 1992, with 84 miles of library stacks built under the lawn to hold 3.2 million books, and 2,000 movable chairs; the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation had been founded in 1980 by Dan Biederman. The Josephine Shaw Lowell Memorial Fountain, by Charles A. Platt, dedicated on May 21, 1912, is the first monument in New York City to honour a woman; it was installed on the park's east side in 1913, moved to the west side in 1936, and winterised with internal heating in 2009 so it can gather icicles. Le Carrousel, installed in 2002 and designed by Marvin Sylvor, carries 14 animal casts and plays French music. The Reading Room was revived in 2003 and the winter village's ice rink opened in 2005. The W. R. Grace Building stands to the north and the American Radiator Building to the south.
Source · Bryant Park; Josephine Shaw Lowell Memorial Fountain, Wikipedia ↗
The green folding chairs everywhere, the sunk lawn between two allées of London planes, the pink granite fountain, Le Carrousel with its fourteen animals, the library's arched rear arcade and terrace, the green kiosks, the reading room under its umbrellas, the ping pong tables, the film screen at the west end, and the sloped face of the Grace Building over 42nd Street. Mood: lunch hour on the lawn, a film after dark. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.