Engineers' Club Building

The American Radiator Building (also known as the American Standard Building) is an early skyscraper at 40 West 40th Street, just south of Bryant Park, in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. It was designed by Raymond Hood and André Fouilhoux in the Gothic and Art Deco styles for the American Radiator Company. The original section of the American Radiator Building, a 338 ft-tall (103 m), 23-story tower, was completed in 1924. A five-story annex, to the west of the original tower, was built from 1936 to 1937. The original structure consists of an eighteen-story tower above a base of five stories, while the western annex only rises five stories. The American Radiator Building's facade is made predominantly of black brick. Gold-colored decorations are used on the building's setbacks and pinnacles. Hood had intended for the original structure to be a standalone shaft, requiring the building to be set back from the lot line and reducing the maximum amount of space available. Inside, the basement, first, and second floors were originally designed as exhibition showrooms, while the upper stories served as office space. The building was completed five years before the American Radiator Company merged with Standard Sanitary Manufacturing Company to form American Radiator and Standard Sanitary Corporation, later known as American Standard. American Standard sold the building in 1988 to a Japanese company. The main building was sold in 1998 to Philip Pilevsky, who opened the Bryant Park Hotel there in 2001. The annex operated as the Katharine Gibbs School from 2001 to 2009 and was converted into the City University of New York's Guttman Community College in 2012. The American Radiator Building is a New York City designated landmark and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Engineering Societies' Building, also known as 25 West 39th Street, is a commercial building at 25–33 West 39th Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, United States. Located one block south of Bryant Park, it was constructed in 1907 along with the adjoining Engineers' Club. The building was designed by Herbert D. Hale, of the firm Hale & Rogers, along with Henry G. Morse, in the neo-Renaissance style. It served as the clubhouse of the United Engineering Societies, composed of its three founding societies: the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), the American Institute of Mining Engineers (AIME), and the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE). The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) joined the partnership in 1917. The Engineering Societies Building's facade is divided into three horizontal sections. The building was originally thirteen stories tall, excluding the second story, which was not visible from the facade. The lowest three stories comprise a rusticated base of limestone, including a colonnade with Doric columns. Above that is a seven-story stone midsection, followed by another loggia similar to that on the base. Inside, the building's first story contains the lobby. The second story is hidden beneath what was originally a double-tiered auditorium with 1,000 seats. The fifth and sixth stories contained several lecture rooms, and the seventh through eleventh stories contained engineering offices; the twelfth and thirteenth stories were devoted to an engineering library. Two stories were added later. The Engineering Societies' Building was funded by Andrew Carnegie, who in 1904 offered money for a new clubhouse for New York City's various engineering societies. The Engineers' Club did not want to share a building with the other societies, so an architectural design competition was held for two clubhouse buildings. By the 1950s, the Engineering Societies' Building was becoming too small for the engineering societies' needs, and the societies sold the clubhouse in 1960. In the late 20th century, the building was used by fashion firms such as women's clothing retailer Lane Bryant and fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger. The building has been owned by Thor Equities since 2005, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.

The Bryant is a residential building at 16 West 40th Street, south of Bryant Park, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, developed by HFZ Capital Group and designed by the firm of architect David Chipperfield. The building topped out in 2016, and construction ended in 2018.

Stella and Charles Guttman Community College is a public community college in New York City. It is the newest of the City University of New York's (CUNY) community colleges and was founded on September 11, 2011. It opened on August 20, 2012 as New Community College. In April 2013 the college was renamed following a $15 million endowment from the Stella and Charles Guttman Foundation. Guttman offers associate degree programs with majors in liberal arts, sciences, business, human services, information technology (IT), and urban studies. Students are accepted with either a high school diploma or Certificate of High School Equivalency.

Gertrude Stein is an outdoor bronze sculpture of Gertrude Stein, located at Bryant Park in Manhattan, New York. The casting was installed in 1992 and is based on a model created by Jo Davidson in Paris in 1923. It neighbors the New York Public Library Main Branch, which, according to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, commemorates Stein's "significant literary contributions".

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 the mayor Jacob Aaron Westervelt. The building stood in Reservoir Square.

An outdoor bronze portrait bust of German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe by sculptor Karl Fischer is installed on the south side of Bryant Park in Manhattan, New York. It is a replica of an iron and copper bust created by Fischer around 1832, the year of Goethe's death. Acquired by the Goethe Society of America in 1987, it was displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until it was relocated to Bryant Park in 1932. Following its installation there, the iron and copper bust was replaced with a bronze casting and dedicated on February 15, 1932. The sculpture was refurbished in 1992 by the Bryant Park Restoration Corporation. The sculpture sits on a Swedish black granite pedestal.

The William Cullen Bryant Memorial is an outdoor sculpture of William Cullen Bryant, located at Bryant Park in Manhattan, New York. The bronze statue was created by Herbert Adams and installed in 1911, the year the New York Public Library Main Branch building was completed.The statue of William Cullen Bryant was one of the statues of “Eminent Americans” that surrounded the Palace of Fine Arts at the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, California. The William Cullen Bryant Memorial was a bronze of the same work by Herbert Adams. A portion of Bryant's poem, Thanatopsis, is at the base of the monument behind the New York Public Library which was not a part of the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition work.Adam's sculpture of Bryant is of an authoritative, elderly man in a conventional business suit with a throw on Bryant's lap suggesting he is a sedentary man, likely to retreat to his books and papers. He sits on an ancient Greek styled chair that recalls his love of the classics. The Bryant Memorial is an example of the legacy of the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago which spurred the City Beautiful movement in New York. The City Beautiful Movement, includes many of New York's grandest public buildings: the New York Public Library, the Customs House at Bowling Green, Pennsylvania Station and Grand Central Station.

The Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations was a World's Fair held in 1853 in what is now Bryant Park 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 nation and all that she stood for. Jacob Aaron Westervelt, at that time Mayor of New York, was the President of the exhibition-committee. The general superintendent was Admiral Du Pont. Opening on July 14, 1853 with newly sworn President Franklin Pierce in attendance, the fair was seen by over 1.1 million visitors before it closed on November 14, 1854. The fair featured its own glass and iron exhibition building – the New York Crystal Palace – directly inspired by London's. The Palace was destroyed by fire on October 5, 1858.Walt Whitman, an American poet, wrote "The Song of the Exposition": ... a Palace, Lofter, fairer, ampler than any yet, Earth's modern wonder, History's Seven out stripping, High rising tier on tier, with glass and iron facades, Gladdening the sun and sky - enhued in the cheerfulest hues, Bronze, lilac, robin's-egg, marine and crimson Over whose golden roof shall flaunt, beneath thy banner, Freedom. Adjoining the Crystal Palace was the Latting Observatory, a wooden tower 315 feet (96 m) high, which allowed visitors to see into Queens, Staten Island and New Jersey. The tower, taller than the spire of Trinity Church at 290 feet (88 m), was the tallest structure in New York City from the time it was constructed in 1853 until it burnt down on August 30, 1856.Today, the expo is also remembered as the place where Elisha Otis demonstrated an elevator equipped with a device called a safety, which would kick in if the hoisting rope broke. This addressed a major public concern regarding the safety of elevators. Three years later, Otis installed the first passenger elevator in the United States in a New York City store.

452 Fifth Avenue (also the HSBC Tower and formerly the Republic National Bank Building) is an office building at the southwest corner of Fifth Avenue and 40th Street in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. The building includes the 30-story, 400-foot (120 m) HSBC Tower, completed in late 1985 and designed by Attia & Perkins. The 10-story Knox Building, a Beaux-Arts office building designed in 1902 by John H. Duncan, is preserved at the base of the skyscraper. 452 Fifth Avenue faces Bryant Park immediately to the north. The HSBC Tower is designed with a glass facade, which curves around the Knox Building to the north; a similar curved tower across Fifth Avenue was never built. The Knox Building's facade remains largely as it was originally designed, with decorated limestone cladding, a cornice above the sixth floor, and a mansard roof. The Knox Building is a New York City designated landmark and is on the National Register of Historic Places. Internally, the tower is tied into the stories of the Knox Building. The Knox Building was erected between 1901 and 1902 for Edward M. Knox, who operated the Knox Hat Company and leased out several stories to office tenants. In 1964, the Knox heirs sold the building to a group that founded the Republic National Bank of New York and used the building as the bank's headquarters. The bank acquired the neighboring lots in the 1970s and hired Attia & Perkins to design a tower to house its new world headquarters, which would wrap around the Knox Building. The tower was expanded in the 1990s and sold to the investment bank HSBC. In October 2009, HSBC Holdings sold the building to Midtown Equities and Israeli holding company IDB Group, the latter of which passed the building to a subsidiary, Property & Building Corporation (PBC). HSBC continued to lease back its space in the building until 2022, when the bank announced it would relocate.

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. Covering 4-acre (16,000 m2) and holding 20 million US gallons (76,000 m3), it supplied the city with drinking water during the 19th century. Its massive 50-foot-high (15 m) granite walls, which presented a vaguely Egyptian-style facade, were 25 feet (7.6 m) thick. Atop the walls was a public promenade offering panoramic views; Edgar Allan Poe enjoyed walking there.When established, the Croton Aqueduct was New York City's foremost water source. Construction began in May 1837 and filling began July 4, 1842 amidst great fanfare. Prior to construction of the aqueduct, water was obtained from cisterns, wells and barrels from rain. The aqueduct and reservoir obtained their names from the water's source, a series of mostly underground conduits that would bring water from the Croton River in northern Westchester County to New York City's spigots.

Bryant Park is a 9.6-acre (39,000 m2) public park located in the New York City borough of Manhattan. Privately managed, it is located between Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas (Sixth Avenue) and between 40th and 42nd Streets in Midtown Manhattan. The eastern half of Bryant Park is occupied by the Main Branch of the New York Public Library. The western half, which contains a lawn, shaded walkways, and amenities such as a carousel, is located entirely over an underground structure that houses the library's stacks. The park hosts several events, including a seasonal "Winter Village" with an ice rink and shops during the winter. The first park at the site was opened in 1847 and was called Reservoir Square due to its proximity to the Croton Distributing Reservoir. Reservoir Square contained the New York Crystal Palace, which hosted the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations in 1853 and burned down in 1858. The square was renamed in 1884 for abolitionist and journalist William Cullen Bryant. The reservoir was demolished in 1900 and the New York Public Library's main branch was built on the site, opening in 1911. Bryant Park was rebuilt in 1933–1934 to a plan by Lusby Simpson. After a period of decline, it was restored in 1988–1992 by architecture firms Hanna/Olin Ltd. and Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, during which the park was rebuilt and the library's stacks were built underneath. Further improvements were made in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Though it is owned by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, Bryant Park is managed by the private not-for-profit organization Bryant Park Corporation, which was founded in 1980 and led the restoration of Bryant Park. The park is cited as a model for the success of public-private partnerships. The park is both a National Register of Historic Places listing and a New York City designated landmark.