Such attention to detail has not been lost on parkgoers. Emily Gilas, 22, a nanny, said it was comforting to know there was such a nice bathroom just steps away. “It’s very important when you’re walking around,” she said. “There’s a Starbucks on every corner, but those bathrooms are pretty gross.”

From time to time, there has been work to update the Bryant Park bathroom, which reopened in the early 1990s. The current renovation is the most extensive yet and will help make it more efficient and resistant to wear-and-tear, park managers said. Soap dispensers were selected, in part, by how fast they dispensed liquid, and hand driers by how quiet they were — so as not to drown out the music. Ceramic tiles were replaced with more durable porcelain tiles. Larger tiles were used to reduce the amount of grout between them, and the scrubbing needed to keep them clean.

The park partnered with Toto, a luxury brand whose products can be found in the bathrooms of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Mandarin Oriental, among other places. Toto provided high-efficiency toilets, faucets, urinals, wash basins and hand driers.

Before closing the bathroom at the end of February for the renovation, park managers asked nearby stores if park visitors could use their bathrooms. Most refused. So the park installed a row of four portable toilets. To make them more palatable, park workers built an L-shaped wall to partly hide them, then covered the wall with a digital print of ivy that cost $1,950. Bathroom attendants wipe down the portable toilets between uses.

That was still not enough to entice more discriminating bathroom users. Kelli Plevyak, 42, who was recently visiting from California with her 3-year-old daughter, Addie, said that as a rule, she refused to use portable toilets “unless it’s a dire emergency.” She had taken Addie to a less-than-sparkling bathroom in Central Park and cringed when her daughter’s head bumped the toilet and her skirt brushed the floor.