Information AboutCentral Park Zoo |
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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). The neo-Georgian brick and limestone zoo buildings ranged in a quadrangle round the sealion pool were designed in 1934 by Aymar Embury II, architect for the Triborough Bridge and the Henry Hudson Bridge (''WPA Guide''). The famous sealion pool itself was 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 . 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. New York's large Gay Community enjoyed the reports ('' Harpers Magazine '' February 7, 2004) that two male Chinstrap Penguin s in the zoo have been homosexual lovers for years. They were identified when they took turns trying to hatch a rock, and when their keeper gave them a fertile egg to hatch "they did a great job" raising the chick {Link without Title} . The Central Park Zoo was featured in the 2005 DreamWorks Animated Film '' Madagascar ''. REFERENCES
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