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Happy birthday to Zoo
(by Kara Krekeler - May 12, 2010)
A new exhibit opening May 15 at the St. Louis Zoo isn’t exactly what one would expect from the renowned institution. No live animals are involved and many of the things on display will inform visitors about people instead.
This year, the Zoo celebrates its centennial, and this exhibit, Zootennial, portrays the 100-plus-year history of the institution, from its roots in the 1904 World’s Fair Flight Cage to the current conservation efforts around the world.
To create the exhibit, the Zoo partnered with the Missouri History Museum, enlisting oral historian Jody Sowell to curate what is the first historical exhibit to be displayed at the Zoo. For the past 18 months, Sowell has been working with Zoo staff and members of the public to create the comprehensive exhibit.
“We’re great at interpreting natural history, but when it comes to human history, we have to turn to the experts,” said Bill Houston, assistant general curator of animals at the Zoo. A 28-year veteran of the Zoo, Houston has been assisting Sowell in pulling the exhibit together.
The goal of the exhibit is to “bring the community together as one giant family” and allow them to remember the animal and human personalities that have highlighted the Zoo’s 100 years, Houston said.
To represent that community, Houston and Sowell enlisted the help of Zoo visitors, hosting a few days last summer in which Zoo visitors could submit their photos and memories for the exhibit. As a result, a display at the center of the exhibit will feature a slideshow of nearly 1,000 images gathered from Zoo visitors running alongside the memories of Zoo staff members and visitors alike.
“The story of the Zoo can be told in any number of ways,” Sowell said.
The early years
To get the full history of the St. Louis Zoo, one has to travel back to 1876, when the city’s first zoo opened in Fairground Park. The Zoological Garden was popular with St. Louis residents and tourists, but in the run-up to the World’s Fair, the zoo was allowed to fall into disrepair.
After the World’s Fair, the city purchased the Flight Cage from the Smithsonian Institution and embarked on a new mission to bring a world-class zoo to St. Louis. Supporters, including the boosterish Million Population Club, argued that such an institution would help the city become a top-tier city in line with New York and Chicago, which already had zoos, Sowell said.
“At the time, St. Louis was booming. It was the fourth largest city in the country and everyone believed that there were only good times ahead,” Sowell said. “[Building a new zoo] was very much about promoting the city. The city’s reputation and the hopes for the city have always been tied to the Zoo. You still see it today.”
Once the city decided to build a new zoo, the only question was where to put it. Possible locations included Forest Park, Carondelet Park, Handlan’s Park, Creve Coeur Lake in west St. Louis County and returning to Fairground Park.
“There was a quite rigorous debate about where it would go,” Houston said. Even Dwight Davis, then the commissioner of Forest Park, argued against building a zoo there, saying that it would destroy the natural beauty of the park.
A couple of things eventually tipped the scales in favor of Forest Park however. First, the Flight Cage was already in Forest Park. Second, the park already hosted a small collection of animals, including various small animals, elk and even bears. Also, and perhaps most importantly, Forest Park was chosen for its central location.
So in 1910, the Zoological Society of St. Louis was formed, and three years later, 77 acres of Forest Park were set aside for Zoo use.
The animal stars
From the beginning, the St. Louis Zoo has boasted a mission based on four pillars: entertainment, education, conservation and research. And while the interpretation of that mission has changed, the mission today is almost identical to what it was in 1910.
“That’s one of the things I’m really proud of,” Houston said. “While the Zoo has changed tremendously over time, the mission hasn’t.”
Early public efforts by the Zoo focused on its entertainment function, with animal shows and rides on Miss Jim — the Zoo’s first elephant, which was purchased by St. Louis Public Schools students, who donated their pennies for the cause — taking center stage.
Houston said that the initial shows, which featured chimpanzees, elephants and lions, served both to show how the animals moved around and to draw in huge crowds. George Vierheller, who served as superintendent and director of the Zoo from 1922 to 1962, instituted many of the long-running shows.
Vierheller used the shows to bring national and international attention to the Zoo, getting newsreels made about the shows and making sure that any movie and sports stars who visited St. Louis stopped by the Zoo to have their pictures taken with the animal stars. At one point, Vierheller even took some of the chimpanzees to the Fox Theatre to see themselves in the newsreels.
“He always had that showman’s spirit to get people to the Zoo,” Sowell said.
Vierheller even made the force-feeding of Blondie, a python that refused to eat, into a show. At one feeding, some 5,000 people showed up to see the process, Houston said.
The performing stars gradually gave way to other animal stars, including the imposing Phil the gorilla and Siegfried the walrus, who was known for spraying onlookers with water when he came to investigate them.
“That’s one of the recurring themes [in the Zoo’s history]. Whether it’s Phil the gorilla, Siegfried the walrus, Miss Jim or Blondie, they were real draws for the Zoo, but they really did engage people and left them with a greater sense of what the animals needed,” Houston said. “They were great ambassadors for wildlife.”
Houston credited part of the shift away from performances to former Zoo director Marlin Perkins and his television program, Wild Kingdom, which showed animals in their natural habitats.
“People had a greater appreciation for the complexities of life. It changed the way we could show animals,” he said. “As the public became more sophisticated in its understanding of wildlife, the Zoo became more sophisticated in its presentation of animals” with naturalistic animal habitats instead of cages.
Today, the Zoo is able to focus more of its attention on the research and conservation pillars of its mission, showing a large number of endangered animals in St. Louis and studying and helping animals in their natural habitats around the world. Houston said that many of the Zoo’s conservation missions are echoed in the Zoo’s exhibits; for example, while St. Louis Zoo researchers are working with lemurs in Madagascar, several species are on display in the Zoo’s primate house.
Tough times
Not all of the Zoo’s history has been rosy, however. In the mid-20th century, the city’s population began to shrink, and along with it, the Zoo’s tax base. While the Zoo is supported by taxes from city and county residents today, it was still a “city zoo” at the time, Houston said.
While the Zoo remained a popular destination, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Zoo administration started to get concerned about its ability to maintain the free attraction. The smaller tax base left the institution with few opportunities to keep up its exhibits, and photos of lions behind crumbling bars popped up in the newspaper, Sowell said. Administrators even considered shrinking or possibly closing the Zoo in the face of low finances.
“The director was saying that the Zoo was no longer one of the top zoos in the country, maybe not even in the top 10,” Sowell said.
The situation led city and county leaders to push for a new tax district to support the Zoo, along with the St. Louis Art Museum, Missouri History Museum and St. Louis Science Center. In 1972, St. Louis city and county voters approved the Zoo Museum tax district, which uses a portion of property taxes to support the institutions. A fifth institution, the Missouri Botanical Garden, joined the district in 1983.
“The Zoo and museums are so important to the city and county that they voted to share the burden. There aren’t too many other cities that have that,” Houston said.
Legislative efforts earlier this year were made that would allow the Forest Park institutions to charge admission (the Garden was already charging admission when it joined the district). In response, current Zoo Director and CEO Jeffrey Bonner said that the Zoo is committed to remaining free for all. The measure is currently being considered by a Missouri House of Representatives committee.
Sowell and Houston said the Zootennial exhibit won’t shy away from any aspect of the Zoo’s history. But they said they hope that the exhibit will give visitors a cross-generational look at the Zoo, allowing parents and grandparents to share their different views of the institution.
“I think there’s something for everyone,” Sowell said. “There are interactive parts, a huge search-and-find, videos of the early animal shows, Wild Kingdom clips, a replica of Siegfried. We’re packing a lot of history into 3,000 square feet.”
• Zootennial opens May 15 in the 1917 Elephant House at the St. Louis Zoo. Admission to the exhibit is free.
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