Central Park Zoo

Central Park Zoo

TEMPERATE TERRITORY: Black-necked Swan, Cygnus melancoryphus
Location	Central Park, New York City, New York, USA
Coordinates	40°46′4″N 73°58′18″W / 40.76778°N 73.97167°W / 40.76778; -73.97167Coordinates: 40°46′4″N 73°58′18″W / 40.76778°N 73.97167°W / 40.76778; -73.97167
Memberships	AZA[1]
Website	http://www.centralparkzoo.com/

The Central Park Zoo is located in Central Park in New York City.

The Central Park Zoo is part of an integrated system of four zoos and one aquarium managed by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), and is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA).

Contents 1 Areas 2 Art 3 History 4 The zoo in popular culture 5 See also 6 Notes 7 Further reading 8 External links

Areas

Trellised, vine-clad, glass-roofed pergolas link the three major exhibit areas—tropic, temperate and arctic— housed in discreet new buildings, of brick trimmed with granite, masked by vines. The zoo is home to an indoor rainforest, a leafcutter ant colony, and a chilled penguin house and Polar Bear pool. It also coordinates breeding programs for some endangered species: tamarin monkeys, Wyoming Toads, Thick-billed Parrots and Red Pandas. There are also Fruit bats in the rainforest and an Anteater exhibit. In June 2009, a snow leopard exhibit was opened, making it one of the few zoos to present this rare species to the public.^{[citation needed]}.

Art

The Zoo owns a number of important works of art, notably:

• Gates of the Children's Zoo by Paul Manship

History

The zoo was not part of the original "Greensward" design for Central Park created by Olmsted and Vaux, but a Central Park menagerie near New York's arsenal, on the edge of Central Park located at Fifth Avenue facing East 64th Street, spontaneously evolved in 1859 from gifts of exotic pets and other animals informally given to the Park; the original animals on display included a bear and some swans. In 1864, a formal zoo received charter confirmation from New York's assembly, making it the United States's second publicly owned zoo, after the Philadelphia Zoo, which was founded in 1859.^[2] The new zoo was given permanent quarters behind the Arsenal building in 1870.

In the early 1900s Bill Snyder was hired and he purchased Hattie, the elephant in 1904.^[3] Hattie died in 1922.^[4]

In 1934, to properly house the zoo, neo-Georgian brick and limestone zoo buildings ranged in a quadrangle round the sea lion pool were designed by Aymar Embury II, architect for the Triborough Bridge and the Henry Hudson Bridge (WPA Guide). The famous sea lion pool itself was originally designed by Charles Schmieder. For its day the sea lion pool was considered advanced because the architect actually studied the habits of sea lions and incorporated this knowledge into the design.

By 1980, the zoo, like Central Park itself, was sadly dilapidated; in that year, responsibility for its management was assumed by the New York Zoological Society which is now the Wildlife Conservation Society. The zoo was closed in the winter of 1983, and demolition began. The redesign of 1983–88 was executed by the architectural firm of Kevin Roche, Dinkeloo. The old-fashioned menagerie cages were abandoned for more natural exhibits. The costs of the renovations, which had been originally budgeted at $22 million, reached a total of $35 million. The zoo reopened to the public on August 8, 1988.^[5][6]

Some of the original buildings, with their low-relief limestone panels of animals, were reused in the redesigning, though the cramped outdoor cages were swept away. Most of the large animals were rehoused in larger, more natural spaces at the Bronx Zoo. The central feature of the original zoo, ranged round the sea lion pool, was retained and the pool redesigned. Since its modernization the Central Park Zoo, traditionally available to parkgoers free of charge, charges admission to its enclosed precincts.

The zoo in popular culture

The Central Park Zoo was featured in Robert Lawson's Mr. Popper's Penguins (1938), in J.D. Salinger's classic novel The Catcher in the Rye (1951), and in the animated films Madagascar (2005), The Wild (2006) and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008), as well as in the Madagascar animated series, The Penguins of Madagascar. The zoo is the setting of the 1967 Simon and Garfunkel song At the Zoo. It was also mentioned in Truman Capote's novella Summer Crossing

See also

• The New York Zoo hoax

Notes

Further reading

• WPA Guide to New York City 1939, reprinted 1982, p 352
• Roy Rosenzweig and Elizabeth Blackmar, The Park and the People 1992
• Clinton H. Keeling, Skyscrapers and Sealions. Clam Publications, Guildford (Surrey), 2002.
• Joan Scheier, The Central Park Zoo. Arcadia Publishing, Portsmouth (New Hampshire), 2002.

External links

• Central Park Zoo Website
• Images of America: The Central Park Zoo, photographs and text
• The NY City zoos
• Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo and Associates: Central Park Zoo: photographs at time of completion

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