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Philip Spiess
And speaking of groundhogs leads us to the question of how:
TO BUILD A ZOO ("Zoo Story")
Why a Zoo? Exotic animals were historically collected by royalty and exhibited in their menageries. There was one such at the Tower of London (reportedly founded by Henry VIII); the Tower’s Lion Gate entrance (the current tourist entrance to the Tower) recalls its former existence, and the ghost of a Tower orangutan supposedly haunts the Tower still [!]. Later these royal menageries became public cultural venues: the Tierpark Schoenbrunn, Vienna (1765); the Menagerie du Jardin des Plantes, Paris (1793); the London Zoological Garden (1828); and the Berlin Zoological Garden (1844). Even William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper tycoon, had a menagerie at his San Simeon, California, estate, La Cuesta Encantada (a.k.a. Hearst Castle). According to David Ehrlinger, in his 1993 The Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden: From Past to Present, prominent German citizens of Cincinnati, having seen some of Europe’s Tiergartens (literally, “wild animal gardens” or zoos), desired to form such an establishment in Cincinnati.
The period in Cincinnati following the Civil War was an era of civic and cultural expansion: the German Saengerfest concerts led to the building of Cincinnati Music Hall’s Springer Auditorium, the founding of the May Festivals, and the establishment of the College of Music; the Cincinnati Industrial Expositions led to the building of the wings of Music Hall, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the establishment of the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and the creation of Rookwood Pottery; the Society of Natural History organized Cincinnati’s Museum of Natural History; and the Public Library and the University of Cincinnati had their major expansions at this time. So the German immigrant citizens of Cincinnati decided it was time to establish a zoo as well.
These citizens took into account the scientific, educational, cultural, and recreational opportunities made available to the public in these sorts of institutions and acted accordingly. In 1873 a local newspaper stated: “the importance of such institutions for science and general cultivation has long been recognized. . . .” As to children: “For general instruction there can hardly be a better school than a zoological garden. . . .” And The Cincinnati Quarterly Journal of Science wrote that a zoo would be a “medium to advance the knowledge of natural science, and to give to the great masses a place for genial amusement combined with elevating observation of the animal and vegetable kingdoms.” (That “genial amusement” establishment, once founded, would include both good German music – and good German beer.)
Who Funds a Zoo? Accordingly, a number of Cincinnati’s prominent businessmen stepped forward
to support the impetus to found – and fund – a zoo. Among these were department store owner John Shillito; steel magnate George K. Shoenberger; art patron Joseph Longworth, and his son-in-law George Ward Nichols, founder of the College of Music (whose wife founded Rookwood Pottery); businessman Julius Dexter; and, above all, John Robinson, owner of the John Robinson Circus, the oldest circus in the United States, with its winter quarters at Terrace Park, in eastern Cincinnati.
The first true zoo in the United States was established in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park in 1874. Thereafter, a Cincinnati German starch manufacturer, Andrew Erkenbrecher, discussed with other local businessmen the idea of founding a German-style oriented zoological park in Cincinnati. In 1872 Cincinnati had experienced an outbreak of caterpillars which had consumed the leaves of the city’s trees. Taking action, Erkenbrecher organized the Society for the Acclima-tization of Birds, which imported hundreds of insect-eating European birds, including starlings and English sparrows, which later overran major American cities, including Cincinnati. [I remember the firing off of guns from the rooftops of buildings in downtown Cincinnati in my youth, a practice intended to scare away the starlings, which were leaving their droppings everywhere. It did scare them away -- it drove them into Cincinnati’s suburbs.]
In 1873 Erkenbrecher proposed to the Acclimatization Society that a zoological society establish a large zoological garden in Cincinnati. The response was enthusiastic enough that the Zoological Society of Cincinnati was formed in July of 1873, stating as its purpose “the study and dis-semination of a knowledge of the nature and habits of the creatures of the animal kingdom.” Once established, its first Annual Report noted “the object of the Society is to establish a garden which will be [note the order of this!] a profit to the stockholders, a credit to the city, and a continual source of improvement to its visitors.”
Andrew Erkenbrecher is considered the founder of the Cincinnati Zoo, the second zoo established in the United States. According to an early Board of Directors officer, the Cincinnati Zoo was “chiefly due to the extraordinary labor” of Andrew Erkenbrecher, who is also commemorated in “Erkenbrecher Avenue” (at the Zoo’s entrance and along its southern border), as well as on a stone-mounted plaque near the Administration Building in the Zoo itself. He died in 1885.
But funding and operating a zoo isn’t always easy; it is certainly not cheap! (You not only have to buy and house the animals, you have to feed them daily and care for them when they are sick.) The Cincinnati Zoo went into financial receivership in 1898; thereupon the Cincinnati Zoological Company reorganized itself in 1899 to operate on a nonprofit basis. Then, in 1901, the Cincinnati Traction Company [streetcars] bought controlling stock in the Zoo, operating it on a nonprofit basis (it, of course, provided transportation up Vine Street to the Zoo, and there was a major streetcar turn-around on Vine Street just north and west of the Zoo entrance, as well as an adjacent horse-car barn, decorated with ceramic horseheads, for the horses). Later, in 1917, Mrs. Anna Sinton Taft and Mrs. Mary M. Emery (both wealthy Cincinnati matrons and city benefactors) purchased the Zoo for $250,000, whereupon it was reorganized as The Cincinnati Zoological Park Association, a nonprofit corporation. And in 1932, the new Zoological Society of Cincinnati was incorporated; in November of that year the Zoo was formally transferred to the City of Cincinnati after being purchased for $325,000, the Board of Park Commissioners overseeing the Zoological Society’s grounds; and in 1933 the Zoological Society of Cincinnati began its management and operation of the Zoo (big sigh of relief all around!).
Not in My Back Yard! So, then, where do you put a zoo? Certainly not in downtown Cincinnati! The early planners, carefully considering those European Tiergartens, determined that the zoo should be located on a scenic, hilly, wooded tract of land, large in size. It should have a varied topography and should include ponds, streams, and level pastures for the animal exhibits. The usual “cage system” of exhibiting animals should be abolished, and the animals should be housed “in as natural a manner as possible . . . [with] the largest possible liberty. . . .” (This rather modern practice only came to be developed gradually at our Cincinnati Zoo over many years, though they tried; early efforts were primitive.)
At first, the newly opened Eden Park, stretching eastward over the hilltop from Mount Adams, was considered as a possible site for the zoo because of its scenic beauty. But, alas! At the time, it did not contain large trees (hard to believe today), because it had been the site of the first Nicholas Longworth’s extensive Catawba grape vineyards [cf. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem on Cincinnati’s Catawba wine, which gave Cincinnati its title of “Queen of the West,” or “Queen City.” You can access the full poem online at “Ode to Cincinnati Catawba Wine – Johnson Estate Winery,” or “Catawba Wine – Birds of Passage – Longfellow,” or at several other sites].
Then the unfinished southern section of the equally new Burnet Woods in Clifton was next considered as a possible site for the zoo; it had existing woodlands. But the mayor of Cincinnati vetoed this plan out of concern that turning over such a valuable parcel of land to a “private enterprise” ceded city control over said land. Therefore, this parcel of land was reserved and eventually became the locus of the University of Cincinnati’s main campus.
Finally, a site called Blakely Woods, three miles from downtown, where the eastern edge of Clifton met the western edge of Avondale, was chosen for the zoo’s location. Used at the time as a dairy cow pasture, the site’s semi-wooded sixty-six acres included the requisite rolling hills, ravines, streams, and a few small ponds. It was therefore leased in 1874 for ninety-nine years with an option to buy.
Thus in the fall of 1874, Theodor Findeisen, a landscape gardener-engineer, was hired to establish the proposed sites of buildings, exhibits, walkways, and plantings around the newly acquired Zoo property. Grading of portions of the land and water enhancements, including a central pond, enlarged by an earthen dam and extensive excavation, created “a delightful park, where hill and vale, grassy lawn, and blue lakelet, flashing cascade, and rustic bridge will alternate in attracting the eye, forming vistas of varied beauty. . . .” (So said the Cincinnati Quarterly Journal of Science, 1875.) Findeisen’s plan included a circular-shaped roadway, the interior of which was crisscrossed by narrow footpaths, around the perimeter of the grounds that was wide enough to permit access by the carriages of wealthy patrons; his essential landscape plan still exists today, although his proposed placement of buildings was later rejected.
“Picturesque” Buildings a Necessity: Zoo buildings in the second half of the 19th century, while giving some consideration to the needs of the animals housed within, nevertheless followed the then current idea that zoo architecture should display, in a generally suggestive way, the representative stylistic features of the country or region from which the animals housed therein had come. In practice, this conception was carried out pretty broadly, the resulting efforts appearing more as taken from “exotic” theatrical sets of said country than from actual ethnic examples. Nevertheless, German Romanticism still held sway in the hearts and minds of the Germans emigrating to Cincinnati, and so a certain “picturesqueness” in the buildings was required and expected.
Therefore, the Zoo hired prominent local Cincinnati architect James W. McLaughlin to design and supervise the construction of all of the Zoo’s buildings and structures in its early period. [I must say, as a professional architectural historian who began this part of my career studying Cincinnati’s architecture, I am not overly impressed with McLaughlin’s buildings; he was a competent and reliable practitioner of the architectural trade, putting up sturdy buildings to be sure, but to my eye they are, on the whole, bulky and lack a certain grace, or are otherwise rather plain. Non-Zoo examples of his work include the original Cincinnati Public Library (librarians who worked there have told me about the horrors of ascending and descending the numerous iron spiral staircases in the stacks all day long – interior pictures of it can be found on the Internet); the original section of Shillito’s Department Store; McAlpin’s Department Store; the old Mabley & Carew Building; the original part of the Cincinnati Art Museum, as well as the attached Art Academy of Cincinnati; the original Y.M.C.A. Building, which later became the Schubert Theater [!] (with the front of its balcony too close to the proscenium arch of the stage); the attractive and successful Alfred T. Goshorn and John Uri Lloyd houses in the Richardsonian Romanesque style in Clifton (both on Clifton Avenue); and the perfectly horrible “reconstruction” of the Hamilton County Courthouse ruins after it was gutted during the “Cincinnati Courthouse Riots” of 1884 (this monstrosity preceded the present Neo-Classical Hamilton County Courthouse of 1905). (N.B.: McLaughlin’s sister, Mary Louise McLaughlin, was a noted Cincinnati ceramic artist, occasionally working for Rookwood Pottery.)]
Nevertheless, the “Cincinnati Zoo Historic Structures,” collectively designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987, are a collection of historically significant structures, mostly designed by McLaughlin. These include those buildings noted below, but we will also mention McLaughlin’s “Carnivora House,” long gone by the time of the National Historic Landmark designation. Herewith are some quick details:
(1) The “Aviary Houses” (completed 1880): Actually, these were a series of seven interconnected buildings (some with outdoor cages) with a higher central pavilion, all in what was called a “Japanese style” (well, they had pagoda-type roofs), now mostly demolished. A single aviary house has been preserved and moved slightly north to serve as the Passenger Pigeon Memorial, both as an exhibit on the passing of the passenger pigeon – it went extinct because it was easy to net and then mass shoot, and because its feathers graced too many ladies’ hats – and as a memorial to “Martha,” the very last passenger pigeon in the world, who died at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914 (she is preserved in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D. C.). In 1918, the world’s last surviving Carolina parakeet, “Incas,” went extinct at the Cincinnati Zoo as well.
(2) The “Monkey House” (1875): This round structure in Turkish or Moorish Revival style (well, maybe), was intended originally to be the “Aviary House,” but became the “Monkey House” (1880; now, for many years, from 1951 on, the “Reptile House”), adjacent to “Monkey Island” (built in 1930) and considered the oldest zoo building in the United States [!].
(3) The “Elephant (Herbivora) House” (1902; opened 1906): This significant structure was not designed by McLaughlin, but by the architectural firm of Elzner & Anderson (to my mind, much more inspired architects than McLaughlin) – it is, I think, the most outstanding building in the Zoo, attempting, as it does, to evoke the spirit of an Indian-style caravanserai (although also, perhaps purposely, faintly suggesting the Taj Mahal as well).
(4) The “Eagle House” (1887): Similar in design and located just below the eastern end of the Elephant House, was the “Eagle House,” a wire-caged free flight exhibit; among the largest in the world, 90 feet long with a central dome 45 feet high, it was designed by Gustav W. Drach (demolished, 1972). [N.B.: The world’s largest cast-iron aviary is on an English estate with the singularly appropriate name of “Dropmore.”]
(5) The “Bear Pits” (begun 1875): Designed by McLaughlin after European models to fit against the large hill at the back of the Zoo (facing north toward Forest Avenue), these “pits” were built to suggest the bears’ mountainous habitats [?]. These pit cages, along with barless lion and tiger grottoes (1934, the first “New Deal”-era exhibits built through federal funding), were augmented with concrete open-moated pits in 1937.
(6) The “Carnivora House” (1875): Of the original structures designed by McLaughlin, the Zoo’s Carnivora House (demolished, 1950), was the largest at 125 feet long and 60 feet wide; it cost over $19,000. It was also the most impressive (to my mind) of McLaughlin’s structural designs. As most work was finished on these buildings in mid-summer, 1875 (except for the Elephant House, which came later), the Cincinnati Zoological Gardens opened to the public on September 18, 1875; admission was 25 cents for adults and 15 cents for children (later reduced to 10 cents), rates which remained the same for decades (the Zoo’s first guidebook, in 1876, was called Zoo-Zoo.). In 1889 the Zoo and its surrounding area was annexed by the City of Cincinnati.
Where Do We Get Weird Animals? The earliest animals at the Cincinnati Zoo were donations (mostly birds) from various local donors. $50,000 was initially allocated for the purchase of zoo animals, but this was later reduced to $20,000, seemingly due to a lack of funding, but also due to the fact that a new 20% duty had been levied by the United States on imported animals. Phineas T. Barnum was the first large-scale major importer of exotic animals into the United States, originally for his great American Museum in New York City, but later for his Barnum & Bailey Circus; he also sold animals to the few existing zoos in America at the time. The Cincinnati Zoo initially purchased zoo animals from an auction at Barnum’s Connecticut Hippodrome in late 1875. However, most of the early animals at the Zoo were purchased from Carl Hagenbeck and sons, animal dealers from Hamburg, Germany, who later established the Hamburg Zoo, the first zoo to have fully “natural” habitats for its animals [cf. Edward P. Alexander: “Carl Hagenbeck and His Stellingen Tierpark: The Moated Zoo,” Museum Masters: Their Museums and Their Influence, chap. 11 (1983)]. Hagenbeck became the leading dealer in wild animals in the world, surpassing even P. T. Barnum. Thus the Hagenbeck family developed a close relationship with the Cincinnati Zoo over a period of seventy-five years, supplying many of its animals through several generations of the Hagenbeck family. The animal collection was also augmented by the auctions of bankrupt menageries.
Who’s Going to Take Care of Weird Animals? One of the early purchases for the Zoo was an African bull elephant; it was delivered by a young man whose handling skills appeared so valuable that Zoo president Julius Dexter offered him a job. [My father told me that, when he was a young boy growing up in Corryville, elephants (I suppose from John Robinson's Circus -- see above) were occasionally brought over to Burnet Woods and housed in the barn-like structure at the south end of the lake (it was still there while I was living in Cincinnati); he would be paid a modest sum to water the elephants while they were there.] The young man who was offered the job by Dexter was Salvator “Sol” Stephan (1849-1949), who stayed sixty-two years and ended up directing the Zoo’s operations from 1886 to 1937. On opening day (September 18, 1875), aquatic birds could not be released into the Zoo’s lake because a six-foot alligator had escaped from its exhibit and was inhabiting the lake. After several days, Sol Stephan, the new young keeper, finally managed to capture the alligator and return it to its pound. (A memorial plaque to Stephan’s memory is located near the Administration Building.) His grandson later served for a period as the Zoo's veterinerian.
In 1888, “Mr. and Mrs. Rooney,” the only chimpanzees in the United States at the time, were features of the Zoo. Named after their resemblance to a famous comic Irish actor of the day, they were occasionally dressed in fashionable clothes like his (he once came to see them). Even more famous was “Susie,” the Zoo’s first gorilla (1931), flown to the United States on the dirigible, the Graf Zeppelin; she was the Zoo’s star attraction for sixteen years. She and her trainer, William Dressman, had meals together, seated at a table with cups, plates, and spoons. Her birthday was August 7, and children attending her birthday party received cake and ice cream, while “Susie” got fruit, nuts, and candy. She died in 1947 at the age of twenty-two from a bacterial disease, one of the oldest gorillas in captivity. Her skeleton was housed in the museum at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Biology (at least it was, circa 1950, when I visited it as a nursery school student from the nursery school at the College of Home Economics, a.k.a. the Women’s College, next door). But apparently both those buildings have been demolished, and I learn that a 1974 fire at UC destroyed “Susie’s” skeleton, although her skull and part of her jawbone were saved; they have now been donated to the Natural History Museum at the Cincinnati Museum Center at Cincinnati Union Terminal. In 1951 the Zoo’s new Ape House included an Amphitheater where some of the great apes, especially the chimpanzees, would perform a la Susie.
It’s All Happening at the Zoo: Once the Zoo was established, the Cincinnati public schools began sending school children to the Zoo twice each year. This eventually became “Zoo Day,” held in May or June, which I’m sure we all remember. The Cincinnati “Food and Home Show,” begun in the 1920s, was a popular August event at the Zoo for over fifty years. Dozens of booths displayed their wares (often with demonstrations [I fondly recall those of the Osterizer Blender booth]), sold food, and offered promotional samples and prizes. Also in the 1920s Zoo Secretary Charles Miller built the first outdoor ice rink in the nation and offered popular ice skating shows. The amusement rides area, known as “Playland,” was enlarged in the 1950s with new rides; it included donkey carts and a pony track. And in 1959 the miniature railroad, built in the late 1940s, was relocated and expanded, passing over Swan Lake and over a 25-foot high trestle constructed over the end of the African Veldt.
“Wein, Weib, und Gesang”: The famous German and Austrian trilogy of “Wein, Weib, and Gesang” (“Wine, Women, and Song”) was fulfilled in the Zoo’s Restaurant or “Clubhouse” – the focus of that German “genial amusement” (i.e., German beer, German wine, and German music); it was the largest of the Zoo’s buildings (and another designed by James W. McLaughlin), being able to accommodate up to fifteen hundred people. Completed in 1876, it was the center of many of the Zoo’s social activities, and it served fine dining; it cost $28,000 to build. At the turn of the century, noted local architects Samuel Hannaford & Sons [to my mind, the best of Cincinnati’s 19th-century architects] designed and added to the Clubhouse a two-story colonnaded veranda, which surrounded the original Clubhouse. The Clubhouse was razed in 1937-1938, with the new Children’s Zoo built on the site. A new Art Deco restaurant, designed to replace it, opened in 1938; it’s today’s Zoo restaurant (I don’t know whether they still serve what was advertised in the 1960s as “Zoo Sauce” on things they offered to eat, but it sounded suspicious as hell to me, coming from, to be frank, a zoo). Later, stands were added around the Zoo which served excellent German Bratwurst and Sauerkraut,
As to music, an early small bandstand was built to present band concerts; it was demolished in 1881, and in 1889 a ”Moorish-style” bandstand [yeah, right!], designed by Gustav W. Drach, was constructed between the lake and the Clubhouse. In 1880, a spectacular performance of “Scenes in Venice” was staged with a cast of hundreds; an enormous canvas backdrop, recreating St. Mark’s Plaza, painted by noted Cincinnati artists Henry Farny and John Rettig (he who did the sets for the “Order of Cincinnatus” pageants, of which I may write later), was utilized. Later that same year, the production of “Carnival Lights” used Edison’s new electric lights (1879) in its production. And in 1879 and 1885, Gilbert & Sullivan’s operetta, H. M. S. Pinafore, was performed, using the Zoo’s Lake (in the 1930s, the WPA theater project performed it again on the lake in Burnet Woods). Thereafter, various concerts were performed between the Clubhouse and the lake on summer evenings and Sunday afternoons; the city’s numerous German singing societies also performed at the Zoo for a number of decades.
The Cincinnati Summer Opera began at the Zoo in 1920 in a Pavilion built between the lake and the Clubhouse; it was begun by Cincinnati’s Musicians’ Union No. 1 (1897), the first unionized musicians in the country, at the beer-garden resort on the lake. The Zoo Opera was under the musical direction of Fausto Cleva from 1934 to 1965, and many world-famous opera stars performed with it, often finding themselves competing with squawking peacocks or roaring lions. [This is where I, and perhaps others of you, first saw opera (for me, starting in the 4th Grade, with von Flotow’s Marta); I also ushered there during my college years, and twice served as a supernumerary on stage, in Tosca and Samson et Delilah; I know Jonny Marks did, too; I remember him as a waiter in La Boheme.] The Opera finally moved from the Zoo to the renovated Cincinnati Music Hall in 1972. Thereupon the Opera Pavilion was torn down in 1974. The Gibbon Islands were later erected on the Opera Pavilion’s site.
A Summary Footnote on the Modernization of the Zoo: Herewith are the new buildings built in the latter half of the 20th century: 1937: the Art Deco Reptile House; 1950: the Fleishmann Memorial Aquarium; 1951: the Ape House and its attached Amphitheater, and the Monkey House (1875) converted into the Reptile House, as well as the Art Deco Reptile House (1937) converted into the Bird House; 1952: the new Carnivora Building opened, and the Bird Aviaries (1875) converted into monkey exhibits; 1953; the Administration Building; 1962: the Walk-Through Flight Cage opened; 1964: the Ape House nursery and the Nocturnal Animal House opened (in this latter, during the 1969 Midwest Museum Conference, of which I was a participant, I hid in its dark corners and asked passers-by if “they’d seen the peccadilloes”). Major improvements have continued to be made in recent years; as a result, the Cincinnati Zoo now has an international reputation as a center of natural and environmental conservation.
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