Spectacle Is Timeless

From “1922 – 1940” (according to the New York Public Library) a postcard of “Bryant Park in 1853”:

Except, of course, it wasn’t Bryant Park then (a) because it wasn’t a park, just vacant land behind the big distribution reservoir located where the NYPL is now and (b) William Cullen Bryant was, in 1853, a late-middle-aged poet and newspaper editor who was well-known but not yet someone you’d name a park after.

As is so often true, the postcard image was very low resolution. This 1853 engraving appears to be the source image (flipped left to right):

It’s not possible to determine which orientation is correct, because both images are wrong. The Crystal Palace was on the site of Reservoir Square/Bryant Park, between 40th and 42nd Streets, east of Sixth Avenue; Latting Observatory (the tall braced tower) was across the street on the north side of 42nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. If the view is from the west, the postcard has the correct arrangement, but the picture is missing the hulking masonry reservoir (wider than the palace and taller than the palace’s lower roofs) that should be visible behind. If the view is from the east, the older engraving is correct, but the reservoir seems to have somehow disappeared from the foreground.

Both the palace and the observatory burned down: the palace in 1858, the tower in 1856. But their purposes during their brief existences – an exhibition hall and a aerial observatory – seem just a bit familiar from New York’s history for the 170 years since.