Central Park Zoo
The American Zoological and Botanical Society was organized in 1860, but
their plans were thwarted by the Civil War. In 1864, the state legislature
authorized the park commission to establish a zoo. Although Olmstead and
Vaux drafted a plan to place the zoo in Manhattan Square (the current
Museum of Natural History), a very popular de facto zoo had been establised just
east of the mall with an odd collection of donated animals, tended by a disabled
Civil War veteran. In 1865 the commissioners placed the collection in the
Arsenal, with a deer park being created in 1868 on the site of the current
Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 1870 the commissioners built five new buildings
in the Arsenal yard for "The Menagerie" and began purchasing animals.
P.T. Barnham developed a relationship with the Menagerie, wintering his
animals at the zoo and occasionally borrowing animals for his traveling
shows.
The Managerie was overwhelmingly popular, attracting large crowds and
extensive press coverage. The first chimpanzee exhibited in the United
States was brought from Africa by the American consul to Liberia in the mid 1880s.
The cramped, haphazard and smelly collection also had detractors, ultimately
leading to the 1895 charter of the New York Zoological Society and the
creation of the Bronx Zoo. However, the popularity of the Central Park Zoo
negated any calls for its closing.
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