Central Park Zoo

The Central Park Zoo is located in Central Park in New York City and run by the Wildlife Conservation Society. A redesign of the zoo in 1983-88 executed by the architectural firm of Kevin Roche, Dinkeloo abandoned the old-fashioned menagerie cages for more natural exhibits. The central feature of the original zoo, ranged round the sea lion pool, was retained and the pool redesigned. 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. Now the Central Park Zoo is home to an indoor rainforest, a leafcutter ant colony, a chilled penguin house and Polar Bear pool. The Central Park Zoo houses breeding programs for some endangered species: tamarin monkeys, Wyoming toads, Thick-billed Parrots and Red Pandas. Most of the large animals were rehoused in larger, more natural spaces at the Bronx Zoo. No zoo was envisaged in Olmsted and Vaux's original "Greensward" design for Central Park, but the Central Park menagerie evolved from gifts of exotic pets and other animals informally given to the Park. The informally developed menagerie was at first housed in the Arsenal building that predated the Park, located at Fifth Avenue facing East 64th Street. It was given more permanent quarters behind the Arsenal building in 1870. When the Central Park Menagerie was officially founded, it was the United States's second publicly owned zoo, after the Philadelphia Zoo (founded in 1859). In 1934, to properly house the zoo, neo-Georgian brick and limestone zoo buildings ranged in a quadrangle round the sealion pool were designed by Aymar Embury II, architect for the Triborough Bridge and the Henry Hudson Bridge (WPA Guide). The famous sealion pool itself was originally designed by Charles Schmieder. For its day the sealion pool was considered advanced because the architect actually studied the habits of sealions 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. 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. Since its modernization the Central Park Zoo, traditionally available to parkgoers free of charge, charges admission to its enclosed precincts. Source wikipedia

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