“Lincoln Park Zoo: 150 Years in Review” by S.M. O’Connor

Years ago, the Lincoln Park Zoo and the Philadelphia Zoo reached an agreement whereby the Philadelphia Zoo would proclaim itself as the first American zoo and the Lincoln Park Zoo would proclaim itself America’s oldest zoo. The genesis of Lincoln Park Zoo lies with the donation of two swans from the menagerie in Central Park in New York City to Lincoln Park in 1868.[1] The Lincoln Park Zoo, Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool, and Lincoln Park Conservatory are located north of the South Pond and south of the North Pond in Lincoln Park on the north side of Chicago. Labor Day (Sunday, September 3, 2018) is the last day to see the exhibit From Swans to Science: 150 Years of Lincoln Park Zoo.

Figure 1 Credit: Lincoln Park Zoo Caption: The Lincoln Park Zoo began as a menagerie in Lincoln Park in 1868 with a gift of two swans from Central Park in New York City.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the zoo included polar bears, leopards, a Bengal tiger, lions, a camel, an elephant, and sea lions.[2] The zoo’s first animal house, built in 1870, was later reconditioned as a bathing pavilion and moved to a point on the beach north of Diversey Boulevard.[3] The Lincoln Park Zoo (L.P.Z.) had a small herd of bison by 1873, and the first calf was born into that herd in 1884.[4] In 1896, the L.P.Z. sold a bull and six cows from the bison herd for $2,000 to E.C. Waters on behalf of the Federal Government for Yellowstone Park.[5] When park employees were unable to load these bison for shipment out west, cowboys from the Union Stockyards were summoned to do the job.[6]

In 1879, two California sea lions arrived from San Francisco.[7] The night they arrived, one of them escaped and barged into Madame Raggaio’s restaurant. [8] A call for help from the zoo summoned six keepers.[9] In 1889, the L.P.Z. acquired nineteen sea lions from C. A. Eastman, one of which died in transit, but another gave birth, so nineteen live sea lions arrived, and were added to a pool that had a seal and a pelican. [10] By November of 1889, between the deaths of more sea lions and the sale of others, only eight sea lions remained at the L.P.Z. [11] In 1903, a large male sea lion named Ben escaped over a fence and the next day tried to board the tug boat Mentor. [12] Lincoln Park Superintendent Warder offered a $25 reward for the safe return of Big Ben. [13] Although the animal was spotted in several places, no one was able to capture him and collect the reward. [14] Big Ben’s body was discovered in April of 1904 on the lakeshore near Bridgman, Michigan. [15]

The Lincoln Park Zoo was the first zoo in a Chicago park, but not the only one in nineteenth-century Chicago. In the 1880s, the West Park Commission’s Union Park also had a zoo.[16] Today, Union Park is better known as the place where landscape architect Jens Jensen, one of the fathers of both the Chicago Park District and the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, planted his first American garden in 1888.[17] Similarly, in 1934 when the Lincoln Park Commission merged with Chicago’s twenty-one other park commissions into the Chicago Park District, Lincoln Park Zoo assumed jurisdiction over the Indian Boundary Park Zoo in the West [Rogers Park neighborhood in the West] Ridge community area.[18] The Ridge Avenue Park District had begun to acquire land for Indian Boundary Park in 1915, and created the zoo in the mid-1920s. On behalf of the L.P.Z., during the Second Great Depression the Works Progress Administration (W.P.A.) built adequate cages for two grizzly bears hitherto enclosed by the same chicken wire as the full-grown bears had been enclosed by since they were cubs.[19] In the first decade of the 21^st Century, Indian Boundary Zoo was home to goats, sheep, chickens, and ducks – farm animals from the Lincoln Park Zoo.[20] In 2013, the Chicago Park District announced plans for the Indian Boundary Park Zoo to close and be replaced by an educational nature center and a habitat to attract wildlife. [21]

The first director of the Lincoln Park Zoo, Cyrus DeVry (1859-1934), started as a keeper in 1888 and worked his way up. He lost his job in 1919 as a result of being a little too forceful dealing with a “masher” bothering some girls. The Lincoln Park Board of Commissioners fired him despite public protests.[22] Col. William N. Selig (1864-1948), a Chicago-born movie producer who had moved his studio from Chicago to Los Angeles, paid him twice as much to run a private menagerie in L.A. DeVry’s successor at the L.P.Z. was his former assistant director, Alfred E. Parker.[23]

The Lion House opened in 1912. The Primate House, which opened in 1927, was home to the gorilla Bushman (1930-1951), profiled earlier this year. Bushman was easily the most popular animal to ever reside in the city.

Edward Bean, who in the late 1920s would go onto become the second director of the Chicago Zoological Society’s Brookfield Zoo – the one who would actually open the zoo in west suburban Brookfield, Illinois in 1934 – started out as a bird keeper at the Lincoln Park Zoo, which he left in 1906 to become founding director of the Washington Park Zoo in Milwaukee. His son, Robert Bean (1902-1975), who succeeded him as director of the Brookfield Zoo, was born at the Lincoln Park Zoo.[24]

Architect Edwin W. Clark designed Aquarium and Fish Hatchery (1922) and later would design the Primate House (1927).[25] The Lincoln Park Aquarium & Fish Hatchery existed between 1922 and 1936. It had thirty-four tanks, seventy-eight varieties of fish, thirty-six varieties of reptiles, thirty amphibian species, and eighteen invertebrate types.[26] Lennington (“Len”) Small (1862-1936), Governor of Illinois (1921-1929), presented a gift of $50 to the 1,000,000^th visitor on September 19, 1923.[27] Aquarium director Floyd S. Young had previously been director of the aquarium in Rothschild & Company’s department store in the Loop, and convinced Rothschild & Company to donate its aquarium to the L.P.Z. for the tropical exhibit that opened in the western ½ of the aquarium’s basement in December of 1934.[28]

The Fish Hatchery took up the eastern half of the aquarium’s basement.[29] The Hatchery annually produced 30,000,000 trout, salmon, and whitefish and released them into Lake Michigan and other bodies of water.[30] Impressed, in 1925 the Federal Government offered to provide eggs in exchange for half the output.[31]

The star attractions of the Lincoln Park Aquarium were an alligator from Lake Hicpochee in Florida that was over ten feet long and Blondie, the albino goldfish.[32] The alligator, acquired in 1926, belonged to the species Alligator mississippiensis, which had nearly been hunted to extinction between 1880 and 1894.[33] Blondie had a scarlet cross “birthmark.”[34] She was discovered by workmen on October 1, 1934 when Lincoln Park’s ponds were drained for the winter, and taken to the aquarium.[35] Several groups offered to buy her.[36] The Chicago chapter of the Red Cross asked the Chicago Park District for the fish and displayed her in a department store for ten days during a fundraiser.[37] Then she went to Washington, D.C., where the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries displayed her in a 5’ tank.[38] Then she went on permanent exhibit in the National Red Cross Museum.[39]

The John G. Shedd Aquarium made the Lincoln Park Zoo Aquarium obsolete. The L.P.Z. Aquarium & Hatchery closed because the larger Shedd Aquarium, which could house saltwater as well as freshwater fish, rendered it obsolete in 1930, and in 1931 Floyd Young, its director for eleven years, succeeded Parker as director of the whole zoo, and couldn’t afford to replace himself at the L.P.Z. Aquarium.[40]

In 1936, the Chicago Park District agreed to Young’s proposal to convert the L.P.Z. Aquarium into an exhibit building for aquatic reptiles. The work was carried out by the W.P.A. This included the construction of pits for alligators and crocodiles. Friends of the zoo donated many amphibians and snakes.[41]

The Rookery pavilion – referred to as pavilions plural in the text of Condit’s Chicago School of Architecture, but not the picture captions – was designed by the Chicago Park District landscape architect’s staff and built in 1936 by the W.P.A. as part of a general expansion of Lincoln Park Zoo.[42] Condit saw the timber-and-masonry structure as being in the tradition of both the late nineteenth-century Chicago School of architecture and Wright’s early twentieth-century Prairie School of architecture.[43] Alfred Caldwell designed the Rookery’s Lilly Pool in 1938. [44] The Rookery still exists in Lincoln Park, but is no longer part of the zoo, and is known as the Alfred Caldwell Lilly Pool.

Marlin Perkins (1905-1986), whom I profiled earlier this year, was Director of the Lincoln Park Zoo from 1945 to 1962. In May of 1944, Perkins, who would soon become famous because of a Time Magazine cover story, left the Buffalo Zoological Gardens in Buffalo, New York to become Assistant Director of the Lincoln Park Zoo. George Donahue, General Superintendent of the Chicago Park District, asked him to become assistant director of the zoo on the understanding he was being groomed to replace Floyd Young, who planned to retire soon.[45] As assistant director of the Lincoln Park Zoo, he would make more than double what he made as Director at the Buffalo Zoo, and he would receive a raise once he succeeded Young.[46] He founded the first year-round children’s zoo in 1959. [47] He fostered the establishment of the Lincoln Park Zoological Society.[48]

Perkins had begun his ascendancy as the most famous American zoo director with unpaid work for the experimental TV station WBKB. Fifteen times between 1945 and ’47, he visited the studio in downtown Chicago with animals and talk about them for half an hour. He stopped out of frustration because the station was willing to send a bus to the Museum of Science and Industry to film, but required him to bring animals to the station. In 1947, TIME editor Otto Fuerbringer (1910-2008) informed Perkins he would be part of a story on American zoos for which artist Boris Artzybasheff (1899-1965) drew his likeness for the cover. Thereafter the Chicago Sun-Times asked Perkins to write a syndicated weekly column about animals, which he did for about eighteen months. Through WBKB, Perkins had met U.S. Navy veterans Reinald “Werry” Werrenrath, Jr. and Don Meier, and in 1949 Werrenrath came to the zoo to ask Perkins to appear on television at the zoo for the new NBC TV station in Chicago. A coaxial cable between Chicago and New York City had been installed, and Perkins showed off Bushman to demonstrate for the executives in New York the Chicago station’s ability to develop programming. Afterward, Werrenrath proposed that they make a weekly show for the Chicago market, and Perkins agreed with the idea in mind this would bring free publicity for Lincoln Park Zoo. Originally, the show was called Visit to the Lincoln Park Zoo. With outbreak of the Korean War, Werrenrath was recalled to active duty in the Navy, and Meir became producer-director of the show. Perkins assumed the show would be broadcast straight through the summer until Labor Day, and then go off the air when schoolchildren returned to school, but in October it became apparent the show would remain on the air through the winter of 1949-1950, and Perkins suggested the show be renamed Zooparade. He was surprised to learn the following spring that Jewel Food Stores had purchased the program. As it was now a commercial show, he suggested he should be paid, and then signed a contract with WMAQ. Within a matter of weeks, it became a network program carried by twenty-eight stations. Quaker Oats Company became the national sponsor of the show to promote its Ken-L Ration dog food. However, since Jewel owned the show in Chicago, two episodes were made every Sunday for the better part of a year, one at five o’clock for the network and one at six o’clock for WMAQ. For Zooparade, animal keepers would bring animals to the reptile house, where episodes were filmed, cared for them there, and returned them to their cages. Consequently, the animals became accustomed to being touched by people (and being picked up in the case of small animals), and Perkins came to think he “had tried to develop a training program to teach keepers how to handle and move animals,” he could not have “found a better medium than Zooparade.” NBC paid Irving, Grimmer, and the keepers as well as Perkins for their work on the show. [49]

Before Perkins became director of the zoo, the staff was composed of the director, his secretary, the foreman, and keepers, but after foreman Richard Auer retired, Perkins reorganized the zoo to introduce the curatorial system.[50] He made George Irving first curator of birds and then general curator. [51] Lear Grimmer began as a curator at the zoo, but eventually became the assistant director.[52] He went through the civil service department of the Chicago Park District to create the position of zoologist. [53] Fred Myers, who had worked for Perkins at the zoo in Buffalo, was brought to the Lincoln Park Zoo as a keeper, and eventually became a zoologist.[54]

Perkins and the zoo benefited from a having a certain keeper on staff named Lyman Carpenter, who was imaginative and industrious, “an artist and craftsman who could build almost anything.” [55] He had a rapport with both people and animals, with the result that there were people who visited the zoo just to see him. [56] It was his idea to create a children’s zoo, and he built it himself out of plywood.[57] Its popularity led to the design and construction of a more permanent children’s zoo.[58]

The zoo nursery was also Carpenter’s idea. [59] Previously, baby animals were taken home at night to be cared for by their keepers, but Carpenter thought it would be better to bottle feed the baby animals at the zoo. [60] Perkins thought the idea was so successful in practice the public should be able to see some of what went on in the zoo nursery. [61] Accordingly, a zoo nursery was built in the lion house with glass windows and glass-front cages. [62] The animal nursery in the lion house drew enough attention that a larger nursery was erected as an adjunct to the children’s zoo, and as soon as they were grew sufficiently large, the baby animals moved from the nursery to the children’s zoo. [63]

Perkins became frustrated with the failure of most zoo visitors he observed to read more than the common names of animals from exhibit labels at the Lincoln Park Zoo. [64] These were no different from the exhibit labels he had personally written for the zoos in St. Louis and Buffalo, consisting of the animal’s common name, scientific name, habitat and range, and a forty-to-fifty word condensed natural history of the animal, so he gave Myers the task of writing shorter labels.[65] Perkins thought they should follow the example of Time Magazine and condense as much as possible. [66] The solution Myers came up with was the tabulated sign with the animal’s common name and other popular names, gestation period, size, weight, range and natural habitat, voice, life expectancy, scientific name, number of young per litter, and uses for mankind.[67] Large animals like elephants were represented by large labels that mentioned the exploits of individuals.[68] The label for Bushman mentioned that he had played football with Eddie Robinson. [69]

Lincoln Park Zoo Director Alfred Parker, Floyd Young’s predecessor, had purchased a young gorilla named Bushman from a wild animal dealer named W.L. Buck (known as Pa Buck) who claimed while he was in the French Cameroons at the village of Yakadouma he had heard of the capture of a baby gorilla by tribesmen in a nearby hamlet, and had purchased Bushman from them.[70] After the Philadelphia Zoo and the Smithsonian’s National Zoological Park had declined to purchased Bushman, Pa Buck made his way to the L.P.Z. and Parker paid him the handsome sum of $3,000. [71] Pa Buck stayed at the zoo for several weeks to smoothly transfer Bushman’s affections to his new keeper, Eddie Robinson.[72] For years after he retired from the animal-dealing business and moved to Florida, each summer Pa Buck continued to visit the L.P.Z. for a couple of days and spend most of that time with Bushman.[73]

When Bushman arrived at the zoo, he weighed twenty-eight pounds and was estimated to be two years old.[74] The bigger he got, the more popular he became, and to show his growth marks a foot apart were painted on the wall of his cage so people could see how tall he was when he stood up, and a scale was installed so when he sat in his metal chair people could see how much he weighed. [75] He topped out at a height of six feet, two inches and weighed 570 pounds. [76]

Weather permitting, when Bushman was very young, Eddie Robinson would take him outside for exercise.[77] Bushman was allowed to climb small trees, and would wrestle with Robinson, who even taught Bushman to play football. [78] Bushman enjoyed running with the ball and being chased by Robinson or to tackle Robinson with a one-arm grab. [79] These sessions ended when Bushman weighed 150 pounds.

After it occurred to Robinson that gorillas had no way to get out of the rain, he started giving Bushman shower baths, and Bushman liked the experience so much a shower head was rigged up for his cage so he could shower daily. [80] Perkins wrote in his memoir that many people had told him that they had driven through Lincoln Park, thought of Bushman, parked, and stopped by the zoo to see him. [81] The gorilla put on quite a show, as he liked to bang the quarter-inch-steel-plate door with his hand or the heel of his foot, making a sound that reverberated in the vaulted building, and he also liked to run and slide on the wooden floor of his cage when it was wet.[82]

One day Bushman injured his foot sliding on the wooden flooring of his cage, and a polished concrete floor was substituted. [83] They wanted him to have the feel of real earth underfoot again, so they added a large outdoor cage, giving him a “suite” of two cages. [84] For Bushman’s entertainment, a heavy truck tire was hung by a chain from the top of his outdoor cage, and he would sometimes twist it into a figure eight. [85] Thereafter, Bushman often slept in the passageway between his indoor cage and his outdoor cage, and a number of staff members like the night animal keepers discovered he snored.[86]

Sometimes, special guests were allowed to see Bushman at close range from behind the primate cages. Robinson or Perkins would fee Bushman bananas or grapes one at a time. One Sunday morning while the Ringling Brothers Circus was performing in Chicago at Soldier Field, Henry Ringling North (1909-1993) visited the zoo with the sole purpose of seeing Bushman and concluded that Bushman was a little bit larger in every respect than his circus gorilla, Gargantua.[87] Another animal dealer who visited the zoo, a fellow from Brownsville, Texas known as Animal King, told a Chicago newspaperman “Bushman is the most valuable zoo animal in the world,” and estimated his monetary value at $100,000. [88] Robert Dean, Director of the Brookfield Zoo, whom Perkins described as a “colleague and friend,” proclaimed Bushman the most valuable animal at any American zoo at a meeting in St. Louis of the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums. [89]

After suffering arthritis and heart disease for months, Bushman died in his sleep on New Year’s Day in 1951 at the age of twenty-two. [90] He was the oldest gorilla in captivity. [91] Newspapers around the world reported his death. Eddie Robinson sobbed, “It’s like losing a member of the family.” [92] Perkins commented, “He is irreplaceable. Money cannot buy another Bushman.” [93] Hundreds of visitors braved typically frigid Chicago weather for that time of year to pay their respects in the Primate House. In Bushman’s empty cage, Perkins placed a life size portrait of the gorilla, which was viewed by more than 5,000 mourners who filed past in the weeks that followed. [94] His body was given to The Field Museum of Natural History, where it was mounted, and Bushman again became a popular display.[95]

In addition to being the keeper of Bushman, Eddie Robinson was also the keeper of a chimp named Heinie who had been born in approximately 1921, acquired by a Chicago physician when the chimp was about two, and was later donated by the physician to the Lincoln Park Zoo when he became too big to easily handle.[96] He would entertain crowds by dancing, slapping the floor with his feet, kicking the metal door until the sound could be heard at the lion house, garb and shake the bars of his cage, slap the floor with his feet again, kick the metal door with the heel of a foot again, building up to a crescendo, then abruptly stop, sit down, and groom himself. [97] Heine lived to be roughly fifty-four-years-old, and even in his old age occasionally did the stomp dance. [98]

In the late 1950s, Perkins fostered the establishment of the Lincoln Park Zoological Society.[99] The founders were steel magnate and big game hunter Walter F. Erman; Chicago Sun-Times publisher Marshall Field IV (1916-1965); Mr. & Mrs. C. L. Frederick; Fred Harvey restaurant chain owner Daggett Harvey, Sr.; Rush Watkins; and Charles Aaron.[100]

In 1945, Perkins met a director at the experimental TV station WBKB, who invited him to come to their studio in downtown Chicago with animals and talk about them.[101] Perkins looked at this as an opportunity for free publicity for the zoo.[102] He was informed there were 300 receivers in Chicago at the time.[103] Between 1945 and ’47, Perkins came to the WBKB studio fifteen times for half-hour-long programs. [104] A keeper accompanied him to the studio to remove animals from their carrying cages or bags and hand them to Perkins, and when he was finished with them, return them to their cages or bags.[105] The first animal he showed on television was a bullfrog.[106] Perkins asked before they started how long he should talk, and the director replied, “Oh just talk until you run out of steam and then we’ll have a chalk talk to follow that.”[107] What brought this relationship to an end was that one day Perkins saw a WBKB bus outside the Museum of Science and Industry.[108] “I went right back to my friend the director,” he later wrote, “and suggested that in future I would like the bus to come to the zoo so we could do the show direct from there.” [109] Perkins had provided free programming for WBKB, but this relationship would make possible a far more lucrative one with NBC.

Through WBKB, Perkins met Reinald (“Werry”) Werrenrath, Jr. and Don Meier, two U.S. Navy veterans who had reentered civilian life in 1945 and in ’49 Werrenrath came to the zoo to ask Perkins to appear on television at the zoo for the new NBC TV station in Chicago.[110] A coaxial cable between Chicago and New York City had been installed, and this would be a demonstration for the executives in New York to see the Chicago station’s ability to develop programming. [111] A reporter, Jim Hurlbut came with the film crew to the zoo, in case Perkins became tongue-tied, and Perkins showed off Bushman and other primates. [112] Afterward, Werrenrath proposed that they make a weekly show for the Chicago market, and Perkins agreed with the idea in mind this would bring free publicity for Lincoln Park Zoo. [113] Originally, the show was called Visit to the Lincoln Park Zoo. [114] With outbreak of the Korean War, Werrenrath was recalled to active duty in the Navy, and Meir became producer-director of the show. [115] Perkins assumed the show would be broadcast straight through the summer until Labor Day, and then go off the air when schoolchildren returned to school, but in October it became apparent the show would remain on the air through the winter of 1949-1950, and Perkins suggested the show be renamed Zooparade.[116] He was surprised to learn the following spring that Jewel Food Stores had purchased the program. As it was now a commercial show, he suggested he should be paid, and then signed a contract with WMAQ. [117] Within a matter of weeks, it became a network program carried by twenty-eight stations. [118] Quaker Oats Company became the national sponsor of the show to promote its Ken-L Ration dog food. [119] However, since Jewel owned the show in Chicago, two episodes were made every Sunday for the better part of a year, one at five o’clock for the network and one at six o’clock for WMAQ.[120] Perkins tried to say the same things in both episodes, but they would never be perfectly identical because Perkins extemporaneously followed a general outline rather than reciting lines from a script. [121]

For Zooparade, animal keepers would bring animals to the reptile house, where episodes were filmed, cared for them there, and returned them to their cages. [122] Consequently, the animals became accustomed to being touched by people (and being picked up in the case of small animals), and Perkins came to think he “had tried to develop a training program to teach keepers how to handle and move animals,” he could not have “found a better medium than Zooparade.”[123] NBC paid Irving, Grimmer, and the keepers as well as Perkins for their work on the show. [124] As Perkins recounted, the show was “good for Lincoln Park Zoo in several ways.” [125] Each Monday, Perkins would hold a conference with Irving or Grimmer, Don Meier, and WMAQ chief technician Harry Mahl to outline the next Sunday’s episode. [126] Meier would arrange for Marshall Head or another WMAQ cameraman to shoot film that would later be inserted into live episodes of the program. [127]

A terrible accident befell Perkins during the rehearsal for the broadcast on April 1, 1951. His secretary had Sundays off, so Perkins had to answer all the April Fool’s Day calls himself, with a little help from Halbut, who enjoyed giving flip answers to people who had been given the zoo’s phone number with the message to call Mr. Wolf or Al E. Gator, etc., with the result they had less than the usual amount of rehearsal time, on a day when Perkins planned to demonstrate snake venom extraction.[128] Twenty minutes before the broadcast was to begin, the timber rattlesnake turned in his grasp and bit him. [129] Chicago Park District photographer Gates Priest recorded the action as Perkins opened the fang puncture with a knife and sucked out the venom, followed by additional incisions and suction with suction cups that were at hand for just such a purpose. [130] Then Perkins was taken to the hospital and stayed there for three weeks.[131] Lear Grimmer had to fill in for Perkins, performing the venom extraction on air and explain the mishap to the TV audience.[132] The episode also opened without the title card tied to Judy the elephant’s cage because she had eaten it.[133] For years thereafter, Perkins met people who insisted they had seen him bitten on camera, and after a while he stopped correcting them.[134] A much more pleasant surprise occurred during another rehearsal when Meir briefed Perkins and Hurlbut that the episode would end with the presentation of the first award for Zooparade – from the magazine TV Forecast (later renamed TV Guide).[135]

In 1955, the insurance company Mutual of Omaha replaced Ken-L Ration as sponsor of Zooparade, and would remain sponsor of the show for the last two years it would be broadcast on NBC.[136] This was the beginning of a long association for the company with Perkins and Meier. Given the success of the Zoorparade episodes filmed on location in in eastern and southern Africa with 16 mm cameras, Meier and Perkins were able to convince NBC to back an expedition to the upper Amazon River, and the Chicago Park District approved.[137] The Amazonian expedition lasted for two months, but when they returned they found out NBC had cancelled Zoo Parade.[138] Perkins and Meier returned to their jobs at the Lincoln Park Zoo and WMAQ, and developed the format for a new TV show Wild Kingdom, after which Meier resigned from his job at NBC, founded Don Meier productions, and found capital to film a pilot episode.[139]

In 1960, Perkins accompanied famed mountain climber Sir Edmund Hilary (1919-2008) on an expedition financed by World Book Encyclopedia (published by Field Enterprises) to the Himalayas to search for the Abominable Snowman and study high altitude acclimatization of mountaineers.[140] A group of about fifty scientists who convened at The Field Museum of Natural History confirmed the initial findings that the supposed yeti skins, scalps, and claws the expedition group had purchased or borrowed were actually animals known to science such as the Himalayan blue bear (Ursus arctos pruinosis).[141] Perkins would hold the post of Director of the Lincoln Park Zoo until September of 1962.[142] Perkins left to replace his mentor George Vierheller (1882-1966) as Director of the St. Louis Zoo, where Perkins had started as a sweeper. He remained there until he retired in 1970, but he continued to come back to Chicago to record narration for Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, which he hosted from 1963 to 1987, at Don Meier Productions.

In 1962, Perkins was succeeded as director by staff veterinarian Lester E. Fisher, who held the post until 1992.[143] Under Dr. Fisher’s leadership, $40,000,000 would be invested in the zoo’s physical plant. [144] According to one of his successors, Kevin Bell, President and C.E.O. of the Lincoln Park Zoo, “Under the Leadership of Dr. Lester Fisher, who took over as director in 1962, the zoo began to focus less on the quantity of species and more on their quality of life.” In 1964, Dr. Fisher founded the Farm-in-the Zoo, a brainchild of Perkins to give city folks a taste of rural life. The following facilities were renovated: the Primate House, Small Mammal House, Bird House and the Children’s Zoo. [145] The Farm-in-the-Zoo also expanded. [146] McDonald’s Corporation founder Ray Kroc (1902-1984) sponsored the Kroc Animal Hospital & Commissary, which opened in 1976. [147] The Lester Fisher Great Ape House was built under a manmade hill in 1976. [148] It provided habitats ten times larger than those in the Primate House.[149] Other buildings erected during his tenure in office were the Crown Field Administrative & Education Center (1979), the Blum-Kovler Penguin & Seabird House (1981), and the Regenstein Bird of Prey Exhibit (1989). [150] In 1986, the Pritzker Children’s Zoo opened.

Figure 2 Credit: Lincoln Park Zoo Caption: This is the Main Barn at the Farm-in-the-Zoo, which opened in 1964.

Figure 3 Credit: Lincoln Park Zoo Caption: The Farm-in-the-Zoo has animal demonstration areas where children can do things like groom a pony.

Figure 4 Credit: Lincoln Park Zoo Caption: The Farm-in-the-Zoo has animal demonstration areas where children can do things like feed cows.

Figure 5 Credit: Lincoln Park Zoo Caption: Renovated and updated in 2002, the Farm-in-the-Zoo has animal demonstration areas where children can do things like interact with goats.

Dr. Fisher hoped to build a reproducing population of Asiatic lions, a subspecies found only in India’s Gir Forest, in American zoos after Lincoln Park Zoo received a breeding pair of such cats –the only Asiatic lions in the United States at the time – in 1973 from the New Delhi zoo in exchange for two jaguars.[151] This dream became a reality in 1975 when the lioness Chandra gave birth to her first litter, four lion cubs.[152] In 1988, under the guidance of the Asian elephant SSP, the Lincoln Park Zoo sent the fifteen-year-old Asian elephant Bozie to Dickerson Park Zoo in Springfield, Missouri, where she was impregnated by resident male Onyx. She returned home and gave birth to a female calf on October 11, 1990 after a (normal) twenty-two-month-long gestation. The baby elephant was named Shanti.

In 1984, seventy-five founding members established the Lincoln Park Zoo Society Auxiliary Board (called the Aux Board). Their leaders were Keith Stocker and Abra Prentice Wilkin, Stocker being the Zoo Society Auxiliary Board’s president. The signature event of the Aux Board is the annual FITZ (Farm-in-the-Zoo) Benefit, a country-western themed fundraiser, the first one of which raised $14,000. In 1987, the Aux Board introduced the SpookyZoo Spectacular – a free Halloween party that allows about 10,000 costumed children to play trick-or-treat in safety, and go on parade.[153] Today, there are about 100 members of The Auxiliary Board of Lincoln Park Zoo between the ages of twenty-five and forty. Most of them are young professionals. They tend to live in neighborhoods on the North Side of Chicago that are near the Lincoln Park Zoo or inner-ring suburbs that are relatively close to it.

After the Lincoln Park Zoological Society opened a bookshop and souvenir shops, it lobbied the Chicago Park District to grant it the food and nonfood concessions in Lincoln Park Zoo. In 1990, the Lincoln Park Zoological Society re-opened Café Brauer, which can be rented out for “social or corporate events.” Two years later, the Lincoln Park Zoological Society restored the Red Roof Cafe to its 1890s appearance. Until 1992, the Lincoln Park Zoo Commission and Chicago Park District had awarded all contracts to deliver food and nonfood services on the grounds of L.P.Z. to outside concessionaires who paid 8% to 10% of sales to the Chicago Park District.[154]

The retirement of Dr. Fisher in 1992 created an opportunity to re-evaluate the zoo’s political and financial situation. Dr. Fisher’s replacement was David Hales, who served as eighth Director of the Lincoln Park Zoo for thirteen months. In 1993, Kevin J. Bell, who had been the zoo’s bird curator, succeeded Hales as ninth Director of the Lincoln Park Zoo. In 1995, the Chicago Park District transferred full operational control of the Lincoln Park Zoo to the Lincoln Park Zoological Society. It is still owned by the Chicago Park District. The Lincoln Park Zoological Society named Kevin J. Bell President and CEO. In 1994, the body of the replica drekar (Viking longship) Raven – often mistakenly called The Viking – from Chicago’s first World’s Fair, the World’s Columbian Exposition (1893), which had been stored in Lincoln Park near the south zoo entrance since 1920, was moved to make way for the Regenstein Small Mammal & Reptile House.[155]

Figure 6 Credit: Lincoln Park Zoo Caption: The 32,000-square-foot Regenstein Small Mammal-Reptile House, built at a cost of $6,000,000, opened in 1997 at the west end of Lincoln Park Zoo. It is home to about 200 small malls, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates, and birds.

After the Chicago Academy of Sciences (C.A.S.) moved from the Laflin Memorial Building at 2001 North Clark Street to the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Lincoln Park in 1999, the Lincoln Park Zoo moved into the old C.A.S. building and it became the Laflin Administration Building.[156] The Lincoln Park Zoo now calls it the Mathew Laflin Memorial Building. As of 2016, one can rent out the lobby or the Ann Milligan Gray Room for meetings and daytime special events.

Between 1879 and 2005, the Lincoln Park Zoo had elephants. The Lincoln Park Zoological Society purposely chose to stop housing elephants after the last three elderly African elephants, Tatima, Peaches, and Wankie died within seven months of each other in 2004 and ’05.[157]

Figure 7 Credit: Lincoln Park Zoo Caption: Regenstein African Journey opened in 2003 at the northern end of Lincoln Park Zoo. The $23,000,000, the 75,000-square-foot exhibit hall Regenstein African Journey has four habitats, three of which are indoors and one of which is outdoors. Kovler African Savanna underwent renovations in 2016 that added about 100 square feet of outdoor space for female giraffes and plains zebras.

Figure 8 Credit: Lincoln Park Zoo Caption: Regenstein African Journey includes pygmy hippos.

Figure 9 Credit: Lincoln Park Zoo Caption: Regenstein African Journey includes black rhinos.

The Pritzker Children’s Zoo opened south of the West Gate and next to the Kovler Seal Pool in 2005. The 105,220-square-foot has four outdoor habitats and one indoor area. The four outdoor habitats are for endangered species – North American black bears, red wolves, river otters, and beavers. The indoor space is home to amphibians, reptiles, and birds that are native to Illinois: American toads, eastern box turtles, and American kestrels.

Figure 10 Credit: Lincoln Park Zoo Caption: The Pritzker Children’s Zoo is home to North American black bears.

Figure 11 Credit: Lincoln Park Zoo Caption: The Pritzker Children’s Zoo is home to red wolves.

Figure 12 Credit: Lincoln Park Zoo Caption: The Pritzker Children’s Zoo is home to otters (like this one) and beavers.

On Monday, March 8, 2010 the oldest animal at Lincoln Park Zoo, a Dwarf African Crocodile designated R1 (as in Reptile One) died. He was just one foot long when he arrived at L.P.Z. in 1940. He was a bachelor dwarf crocodile for most of his life, but in 2007 he developed an interest in a female named Maggie and had a clutch of five baby crocs with her.

In a $12,000,000 project, L.P.Z. dredged and drained the approximately 140-year-old South Pond of Lincoln Park, filled the South Pond with clean water, and added flora and fauna to it, in order to create a harmonious eco system. This area was relabeled the Nature Boardwalk at Lincoln Park Zoo. They encircled the South Pond with a half-mile-long boardwalk. The South Pond, now fifteen feet deep in one place, was stocked with largemouth bass, bluegills, and other fish. The Nature Boardwalk opened on Friday, June 24, 2010. This area has 609,840 square feet of open, natural space.

Figure 13 Credit: Lincoln Park Zoo Caption: The Nature Boardwalk is at the southernmost end of the Lincoln Park Zoo, east of Café Brauer and farm-in-the-Zoo. It is open daily from 6:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. The Lester E. Fisher Bridge has this magnificent view of the Chicago skyline.

Figure 14 Credit: Lincoln Park Zoo Caption: One of the features of the Nature Boardwalk is the Peoples Gas Pavilion. Designed by Studio Gang, it is seasonally open for educational programs and yoga.

In April of 2011, the L.P.Z. was also able to show off Sai, a three-month-old gibbon. The gibbon is a critically endangered species of ape native to Southeast Asia. His name is Sai (pronounced like the word sigh), means son in Taiwanese. Dr. Kristen Lukas won a fellowship at the Lincoln Park Zoo and became the first Curator of Primates. During her research for renovation of the Great Ape House, she discovered that the gorillas preferred to sit in corers, but this made it difficult for visitors to views the animals, so the new building had glass corners. Six months into the project, local actress Bonnie Hunt approached the L.P.Z. because she wanted to direct a film about a fictional curator, a dying woman, designing a new exhibit for her favorite gorilla to make sure he’s comfortable before she dies. For the film Dr. Lukas trained a gorilla to touch glass at the same time as Jolee Richardson.[158] Dr. Lukas departed the Lincoln Park Zoo to work in her hometown at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo. [159]

The $25,700,000 Regenstein Center for African Apes, which opened in 2004, is home to chimpanzees and western lowland gorillas. Built on the site of the former great ape house, which was demolished in 2002, the Regenstein Center for African Apes has 29,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor living space. It has three habitats: the Kovler Gorilla Bamboo Forest, the Strangler Fig Forest, and the Dry Riverbed Valley. Both the Strangler Fig Forest and the Dry Riverbed Valley can accommodate either chimpanzees or gorillas. The indoor exhibits are contiguous with the outdoor exhibits with the result they appear to be a single exhibit. The Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes is quartered in the building.

On March 22, 2012, the L.P.Z. announced that under the Gorilla Species Survival Plan® eight-year-old Azizi and six-year-old Amare would be joined by six-year-old gorillas Mosi from the Little Rock Zoo and Umande from the Columbus Zoo to form the Lincoln Park Zoo’s first bachelor group. Such groups form in the wild when male gorillas reach ages six-to-ten because older silverbacks began to consider them rivals. At the same time Lincoln Park Zoo would be forming the bachelor group, the silverback JoJo would be transferred to the Brookfield Zoo in the hopes he would breed there and the females Tabibu would move to the Columbus Zoo and Makari would move to the Kansas City Zoo.[160]

Amare’s mother Kowali was born at L.P.Z. in 1978 and lived there until 2013. She is also the mother of the female Rollie and the grandmother of Rollie’s daughter Nayembi. A few months after Nayembi’s birth in November of 2012, the Lincoln Park Zoo transferred Kowali to the Knoxville Zoo in Tennessee to provide companionship for Wanto, a silverback who lived alone for fifteen years at the Kansas City Zoo. Western lowland gorillas are an endangered species due to poaching and loss of habitat. The L.P.Z.’s Population Management Center conducts centralized management of 600 species for 220 accredited zoos across the U.S. Director Sarah Long and her staff have recommended 100,000 transfers. She indicated that the decision to transfer a gorilla from one zoo to another is one of the toughest to make because zoo visitors recognize individual gorillas and know them by name. Dr. Lukas explained that in the U.S. there were 342 gorillas at fifty zoos and she had recommended thirty-one of them transferred from one zoo to another under the 2011-2012 plan. With so few specimens in captivity, the zoos have to keep track of each animal’s family tree and avoid in-breeding. Two other female gorillas were to be transferred from elsewhere to the Knoxville Zoo to possibly breed with Wanto. Kowali would be too old to reproduce, but could add social stability to the group.[161]

The L.P.Z. gorilla population had grown by two specimens in 2012, as one month before Nayembi’s birth, the seventeen-year-old female Bana gave birth to Patty, named in honor of Patty Meyers, a zoo supporter, on October 11, 2012. Patty was the fifty-first gorilla born in the Lincoln Park Zoo. The father was the twenty-three-year old silverback Kwan. The Lincoln Park Zoo’s western lowland gorillas live in the Regenstein Center for African Apes.[162]

The Lincoln Park Zoo’s first chimpanzee and the oldest chimpanzee in a North American zoo, Keo, died at L.P.Z. on Monday, September 30, 2013, at the age of fifty-five, L.P.Z. President Kevin Bell announced. Cardiac disease had compromised his quality of life to such an extent the veterinarian staff determined he needed to be euthanized. Bell stated, “A remote EKG device made it possible for veterinary experts to monitor Keo’s heart health, better informing this difficult quality-of-life decision. The EKG data ensures that Keo will leave one more legacy as it adds to the body of knowledge on how to best care for geriatric chimpanzees.” Keo arrived at L.P.Z. as a baby in 1959 and fathered eleven chimps over time. Geriatric by chimpanzee standards, he spent his final years in the Regenstein Center for African Apes with females Vicky and Kibali.[163]

Many people may not realize that Lincoln Park Zoo conducts research like the Brookfield Zoo. That may change with the revelation in late 2010 that Dave Morgan, a fellow at the Lester E. Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes, was part of a team of researchers that had discovered the origin of the deadliest strain of malaria in the world.

In 2011, the Kovler Penguin-Seabird House closed. It had been in operation for thirty years.[164]

The Lincoln Park Zoo’s sole remaining polar bear, Anana, became world-famous in January of 2014 when it became so cold (with a predicted wind chill factor of -40° Fahrenheit for Monday, January 6, 2014) that the twelve-year-old bear stayed warm indoors in a climate-controlled space. Lincoln Park Zoo spokeswoman Sharon Dewar explained that in the Arctic wilderness polar bears develop a layer of blubber (up to five inches thick) to protect them against ultra-cold temperatures, but as she lived in the warmer climate of Chicago, she had not built up that layer of blubber.[165]

On Wednesday, March 19, 2014, the L.P.Z. revealed a $22,000,000 capital improvement plan that would drastically change the northeastern corner of the zoo with a 45,000-square-foot project to be completed by the spring or summer of 2016 that see the return of penguins to the zoo, but in an outdoor exhibit, and improve living conditions for multiple polar bears. It would include a running waterfall that would feed into a stream that would lead into a pool. In the future, the polar bears would have three times as much space devoted to their species at the zoo, but the pool would be 25% to 30% smaller. The existent polar bear exhibit and other exhibits at the north end of Lincoln Park Zoo would be demolished in the fall of 2014, before which Anana the polar bear, the sun bear Fong, the Andean bear Manny, and two hyenas Thika and Kai would go to other zoos, though, at the time, L.P.Z. officials thought Anana might return. “It’s really time for us to build a new polar bear exhibit both for the bears, for the safety of our staff who are working with and around the bears and for the visitors,” said Steve Thompson, Ph.D., Senior Vice President of Capital and Programmatic Planning. Whereas the Antarctic penguins that had resided in the Kovler Penguin-Seabird House had required extremely cold temperatures and aquatic conditions, the new habitat would be home to penguins native to southern Africa that would be acclimate to Chicago’s environment in an outdoor setting. The new outdoor penguin habitat would include a simulation of a sandy beach and an indoor area with twelve breeding nests where the penguins would also be able to escape extreme hot or cold weather. It was designed to initially house a dozen African penguins with enough room to accommodate twice that number. DNAinfo | Chicago’s Paul Biasco recounted, “Zoo staff said the reintegration of penguins and creation of an environment more like the tundra polar bears are used to in the wild will help push a new message of conservation – rather than biology – for visitors.” In August of 2014, the polar bear enclosure closed and the zoo’s popular last polar bear, Anana, a fourteen-year-old bear that had spent the last thirteen years at the Lincoln Park Zoo, went to the North Carolina Zoo in Asheboro, North Carolina.[166]

The Lionel Train Adventure, sponsored by the model train manufacturer Lionel Trains, is a ride for children near the West Gate that opened in October of 2014. The blue-and-red train has five cars and can accommodate twenty-eight people. Tickets are $3 per person.

The Regenstein Macaque Forest, a new 2.2-acre exhibit devoted to Japanese macaques (also known as snow monkeys) opened on Thursday, April 2, 2015 on the former site of the Kovler Penguin-Seabird House. The state-of-the-art home of a troop of Japanese macaques was the first new animal exhibit to be completed thanks to the “Pride of Chicago” fundraising campaign.

Figure 15 Credit: Lincoln Park Zoo Caption: The 11,114-square-foot Regenstein Macaque Forest was constructed at a cost of $11,000,000 as part of the $15,500,000 project: the renovation of the West Gate and construction of the Lionel Train Adventure.

Figure 16 Credit: Lincoln Park Zoo Caption: This is an example of enrichment at the Regenstein Macaque Forest.

Restoration of the Main Mall finished in the winter in 2015. The redesigned garden and stairwell reflect the Lincoln Park Zoo’s landscape master plan.

In mid-February of 2016, the Kovler Seal Pool, one of the most popular attractions at Lincoln Park Zoo, underwent renovations. The Kovler Seal Pool re-opened in the summer of 2016. This exhibit is over 135 years old. Renovations include the reshaping of the rocky landing to give the gray seals more space to bask in sunlight and for visitors to see demonstrations of operant-conditioning of seals; the addition of artificial kelp to the water; and the installation of extra lights. The deck space doubled, the shade sail for the sales increased at the request of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and fifty pieces of artificial kelp were added to the water. General Curator Dave Bernier explained these changes would make seals and workers alike more comfortable and make the water more interesting for seals to swim through and visitors to view. The Kovler Seal Pool dated back to 1879, and had originally been home to sea lions. [167]

The Robert and Mayari Pritzker Penguin Cove opened at the north end of the zoo on October 6, 2016 next door to Regenstein African Journey. The outdoor exhibit is 3,350 square feet with a viewing area of 1,350 square feet. It is home to a colony of a dozen African penguins. Zoo visitors can get up close to the penguins through the Malott Family Penguin Encounters program. Learn more at http://www.lpzoo.org/penguins.

Figure 17 Credit: Julia Fuller, Lincoln Park Zoo Caption: This is half the colony of African penguins in the Robert and Mayari Pritzker Penguin Cove exhibit on September 20, 2016.

Figure 18 Credit: Todd Rosenberg, Lincoln Park Zoo Caption: This is an African penguin swimming in the Robert and Mayari Pritzker Penguin Cove on September 27, 2016.

Walter Family Arctic Tundra opened in November of 2016. The new exhibit is much larger and has more varied terrain thanks to landscaping and artificial rocks, with a swimming pool and a swimming hole, which is what polar bears prefer over the typical setup dominated by a single large swimming pool. When both the waterfall and stream are running, the water volume in the exhibit is 49,900 gallons. The Walter Family Arctic Tundra exhibit was designed to house a breeding pair and their cubs. Along the center, there are built-in separators that allow for the exhibit to be divided into two habitats in the event cubs are born, as called for by the Association of Zoos & Aquariums Polar Bear Species Survival Plan®. In addition to 8,383 square feet of open-air exhibit space, there are 3,100 square feet of both indoor and outdoor behind-the-scenes spaces for the mother and cubs to bond and where the cubs can grow before they explore the exhibit in its entirety. In addition to dens that are not visible to the public, Walter Family Arctic Tundra exhibit has an artificial ice cave where the bears can escape from the heat yet be visible to zoo visitors. The ice cave extends beyond the habitat out into the larger exhibit as does its wall of ice. The ice cave has chillers on both sides of the window. Consequently, zoo visitors can be cooled by chillers like any polar bear that happens to be in the ice cave at that moment, which is especially welcome in summertime. At the southern end of the exhibit, zoo visitors may watch caregivers reward polar bears for presenting their paws and claws at the ten-foot-by-ten-foot training wall. This is positive reinforcement, a matter of voluntary operant-conditioning. Compatible areas of the exhibit have green roofs with trees, shrubs, and sedum trays. The $15,3000,000 exhibit is part of the Lincoln Park Zoo’s “Pride of Chicago” capital campaign that began in 2012.[168]

Siku, a nine-foot-tall, 1,000-pound, six-year-old male, arrived from the Louisville Zoo in Louisville, Kentucky and entered the exhibit on Thursday, November 10, 2016. The name Siku means ice in the language of the Inupiaq tribe of Inuit (Eskimos) in northern Alaska.[169] The exhibit opened to the public on Thursday, November 17, 2016. In 2017, Kobe, a 565-pound, seventeen-year-old female, joined seven-year-old Siku. General Curator Dave Bernier explained that Siku and Kobe had to be kept separated by various dividers the first few times they encountered each other until they came face-to-face through a mesh screen on Wednesday, April 19, 2017.[170]

Figure 19 Credit: Julia Fuller, Lincoln Park Zoo Caption: This is the waterfall in the Walter Family Arctic Tundra exhibit on October 25, 2016.

Figure 20 Credit: Julia Fuller, Lincoln Park Zoo Caption: This is male polar bear Siku in the Walter Family Arctic Tundra exhibit on October 31, 2016.

Figure 21 Credit: Julia Fuller, Lincoln Park Zoo Caption: These Lincoln Park Zoo visitors are looking at the male polar bear Siku in part of the outdoor environment at the Walter Family Arctic Tundra exhibit on November 11, 2016.

Figure 22 Credit: Julia Fuller, Lincoln Park Zoo Caption: These Lincoln Park Zoo visitors are looking at the male polar bear Siku through a window of the artificial ice cave at the Walter Family Arctic Tundra exhibit on November 11, 2016.

The Hurvis Family Learning Center opened over the winter of 2017-18. [During the planning stages, this was called the Hurvis Center for Learning Innovation and Collaboration.] L.P.Z. staff use this space to create and implement educational programs to inspire the next generation of scientists and conservationists.

The Searle Visitor Center, located near the East Gate, will be a place where visitors can learn about new arrivals at the zoo and daily activities. It will be over twice the size of Gateway, and will also feature the Lincoln Park Zoo’s first-ever Member Lounge.

When I first looked into this issue in December, the Lincoln Park Zoological Society sought to raise $125,000,000 through the “Pride of Chicago” fundraising campaign, and had raised $97,000,000, but as of now the Lincoln Park Zoological Society hopes to raise $135,000,000 and has actually raised over $110,000,000 since 2012. The renovation of the Kovler Lion House will be the capstone of the “Pride of Chicago” fundraising campaign. It will be the largest project undertaken by the Lincoln Park Zoo to date.

On Thursday, August 9, 2018, the Lincoln Park Zoo’s Urban Wildlife Institute announced institutions in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and Wilmington, Delaware had joined the Urban Wildlife Information Network (U.W.I.N.). These were the City of Edmonton and the University of Alberta in Edmonton and the Brandywine Zoo in Wilmington.

Given its location within Lincoln Park, the Lincoln Park Zoo can only expand so much and it is highly unlikely it will ever be as physically large as the Brookfield Zoo, but its operations have greatly expanded over the last few decades. The organization had already shown potential for this kind of broader activity with the Lincoln Park Aquarium & Fish Hatchery in the 1920s. The Lincoln Park Zoo was already a cultural treasure for Chicgoans when it was a collection of animals cared for by park employees, but thanks to Marlin Perkins, his successors, and the Lincoln Park Zoo Society Perkins founded, it has evolved into a complex organization that cares for animals on site, helps coordinate the care of animals at zoos around the U.S., and conducts research in the field.

The Lincoln Park Zoo is free 365 days a year anyway. The address is 2400 North Cannon Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60614. The phone number is (312) 742-2000. The Website is https://www.lpzoo.org/.

Figure 23 Credit: Sean M. O’Connor Caption: Marlin Perkins’ ZOOPARADE is a children’s book about his first television series made at Lincoln Park Zoo. The Ark in the Park: The Story of Lincoln Park Zoo is a history of the zoo.

ENDNOTES

[1] Julia Sniderman Bachrach, The City in a Garden: A History of Chicago’s Parks. Chicago: The Center for American Places at Columbia College Chicago. Distributed by The University of Chicago Press (2012), p. 11

[2] Bachrach, p. 11

[3] Mark Rosenthal, Carol Tauber, and Edward Uhlir: The Ark in the Park: The Story of Lincoln Park Zoo. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press (2003), p. 22

[4] Rosenthal, p. 28

[5] Rosenthal, pages 23 and 28

[6] Rosenthal, p. 23

[7] Rosenthal, p. 48

[8] Rosenthal, p. 48

[9] Rosenthal, p. 48

[10] Rosenthal, p. 48

[11] Rosenthal, p. 48

[12] Rosenthal, p. 48

[13] Rosenthal, pages 48 and 49

[14] Rosenthal, p. 49

[15] Rosenthal, p. 49

[16] Forest Preserve District of Cook County, Nature Bulletin No. 608-A September 11, 1976

[17] Forest Preserve District of Cook County, Nature Bulletin No. 608-A September 11, 1976

[18] Rosenthal, p. 68 see also footnote 19

[19] Rosenthal, p. 68

[20] Chicago Park District, “Indian Boundary Park & Cultural Center” (http://www.chicagoparkdistrict.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/parks.detail/object_id/068c3d93-e5f8-4d02-8767-867161271b8a.cfm) Accessed 09/01/10

[21] Benjamin Woodward, “Indian Boundary Park Zoo, In State of ‘Disrepair,’ Could Close for Good,” DNAinfo | Chicago 28 June, 2013 (https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20130628/west-rogers-park/indian-boundary-park-zoo-state-of-disrepair-could-close-for-good) Accessed 07/1/13

[22] Rosenthal, p. 41

[23] Rosenthal, pages 39, 40, and 41

[24] Ross, pages 23 and 24

Ross cites Bean’s account of his childhood in Emily Hahn’s book Animal Gardens.

[25] Rosenthal, p. 132

[26] Rosenthal, p. 132

[27] Rosenthal, p. 132

[28] Rosenthal, pages 132 & 133

[29] Rosenthal, p. 133

[30] Rosenthal, p. 133

[31] Rosenthal, p. 133

[32] Rosenthal, p. 134

[33] Rosenthal, p. 134

[34] Rosenthal, p. 134

[35] Rosenthal, p. 134

[36] Rosenthal, p. 134

[37] Rosenthal, p. 134

[38] Rosenthal, p. 135

[39] Rosenthal, p. 135

[40] Rosenthal, pages 63

[41] Rosenthal, pages 136 and 137

[42] Condit, p. 214 and figures 186 & 187

[43] Condit, p. 214 and figure 187

[44] Sally A. Kitt Chappell, Chicago’s Urban Nature, pages 160 and 168

[45] Marlin Perkins, My Wild Kingdom: An Autobiography. New York, NY: E.P. Dutton (1982), pages 87 and 88

[46] Perkins, p. 88

[47] Merritt, p. 479

[48] Merritt, p. 479

[49] Perkins, pages 91, 92, 113-116

[50] Perkins, p. 110

[51] Perkins, pages 110 & 111

[52] Perkins, p. 116

[53] Perkins, p. 111

[54] Perkins, p. 111

[55] Perkins, p. 109

[56] Perkins, p. 109

[57] Perkins, p. 109

[58] Perkins, pages 109 and 110

[59] Perkins, p. 110

[60] Perkins, p. 110

[61] Perkins, p. 110

[62] Perkins, p. 110

[63] Perkins, p. 110

[64] Perkins, p. 111

[65] Perkins, p. 111

[66] Perkins, p. 111

[67] Perkin s, p. 112

[68] Perkins, p. 112

[69] Perkins, p. 112

[70] In 1948, on a trip to the French Cameroons to purchase three additional gorillas, Perkins learnt that Pa Buck’s story of how he acquired Bushman was a tall tale from Presbyterian missionaries Dr. Albert Irving Good, and his wife. In 1928, the Goods had purchased a baby gorilla from native Africans who had captured him near the village of Yakadouma, and they named him Bushman. They hired a woman to be a kind of nanny for him. He would often frolic in the grass around the mission and come running back to the Goods for a hug and a pat on the back. At first, they declined Pa Buck’s offer to purchase Bushman from them, but they needed money to buy stained glass windows for a stone church they were building and Dr. Good also realized Bushman would soon grow too big for them to handle him. Eventually they reached an agreement whereby Pa Buck brought Bushman along when he returned to the U.S., sold him to Lincoln Park Zoo, and split the proceeds. The Goods then used their half of the $3,000 Dr. Parker had paid Pa Buck for Bushman to buy stained glass windows that depicted the Nativity. See Perkins, pages 93, 94, 103 and 104

[71] Perkins, p. 93

[72] Perkins, p. 93

[73] Perkins, p. 100

[74] Perkins, p. 94

[75] Perkins, p. 95

[76] Perkins, p. 95

[77] Perkins, p. 94

[78] Perkins, pages 94 and 95

[79] Perkins, p. 95

[80] Perkins, p. 96

[81] Perkins, p. 96

[82] Perkins, p. 96