1.

In 1847, following the construction of one of the city’s most imposing edifices, the Croton Distributing Reservoir, on the present site of the New York Public Library, the city designated the former potter’s field to its west as a public park called Reservoir Square, a simple Victorian greensward. The reservoir itself, built in 1839-43, was a man-made lake four acres in area, surrounded by massive, fifty-foot-high, twenty-five-foot-thick granite walls designed in a vaguely Egyptian style. Along the tops of the walls were public promenades, offering breathtaking views. It was an integral part of the first supply of fresh water carried by aqueducts into the city from upstate New York.

2 (txt).
fountain : lisen to the sound of water! Imagine a big Reservoir instead of the Library. A man-made lake of 1839-43 and its walls being public promenades.