Many millions of visitors have become familiar with the look of the Brookfield Zoo since it first opened its gates in 1934, 73 years ago.
But 80 years ago, in 1927, the zoo was just beginning to be built, and the grounds looked vastly different from they way they do today. Yet, there are areas and buildings that have withstood the passing of those eight decades and are still with us in the 21st century.
Like any great project, the Brookfield Zoo began with a plan. Or, in truth, many plans, worked out on maps and models illustrating preliminary ideas about how the zoo should look. In the early 1920s, Edwin H. Clark, architect for the Chicago Zoological Society, created an early conceptual map that bore only a passing resemblance to the way the zoo would appear in 1934. There was, for instance, no East or West Malls, just a single North-South Mall leading to the bear grottoes.
It’s all spelled out in the “Chicago Zoological Society Yearbook” from 1927. That the society had even gotten this far with the zoo was due to a second chance. The Nov. 6, 1923 Cook County-wide referendum to get tax money for the zoo failed, and the building of the zoo was greatly delayed.
Edith Rockefeller McCormick’s gift of land to the Forest Preserve of Cook County, made on May 3, 1920, stipulated that a condition of the grant was that the zoo be completed within five years of that date. Thus, 1925. If there occurred a breach of this condition, her gift of land would go back to her or her heirs.
The 1923 failure of the referendum looked like the zoo project was doomed, but, afterwards, “Amendments to the McCormick Deed” were agreed upon by all parties. It was now or never for the zoo, with a new tax referendum set for a date prior to Dec. 1, 1926. Even if it passed this time, there was a final date for completion of the zoo spelled out, July 31, 1934. If the “Zoological Garden” was not open by that date, all land given would, as before, go back to Edith Rockefeller McCormick or her heirs. (In this case, it would have been her heirs, since she died in 1932.)
On April 13, 1926, the tax referendum passed, with more than 295,000 people voting in favor of the zoo. After that date, work on the zoo began almost immediately. Since the tax money would not be coming in until the next year, 1927, money was allowed to be borrowed from the Forest Preserve District and later repaid. Buying privately owned parcels of property, grading, dredging and construction could begin without having to wait.
After years of planning, the Chicago Zoological Society knew just where to begin. The first thing to be built on zoo land was an eight-foot high fence, with three strings of barbed wire at the top. The contract for this, signed on Dec. 15, 1926, was given to the Cyclone Fence Company of Chicago and Waukegan. This first project was to cost $19,465.72. The J.P. Miller Well Company of Brookfield drilled the zoo’s artesian well at a cost of $16,566.96. The well could supply up to 750,000 gallons of water every 24 hours.
Stanley Field, chairman of the Building Committee, related in 1927 that: “During this season, we hope to complete all of this underground work, get all the piping and sewerage plants in, etc. We expect to build a power house, an administration building, the main entrance, a comfort station, and one animal house. The trustees have decided that the first animal building shall be the Reptile House.”
All of this came to pass in that first, busiest year of 1927. The zoo grounds were a beehive of activity, with a small railroad train operating between what is today Indian Lake on the west, and the Refectory on the east. Carloads of swampy mud were excavated at the lake site and then sent east, on a specially laid track bed, to build up the site of the future Refectory restaurant, which opened in 1939. When the lake was deep enough, an inlet was opened to Salt Creek, and the water from it poured in. Today, the lake is no longer connected to the creek.
The 1939 Zoo Guide book reports that the earliest buildings were “constructed after the informal Italian farm style of the fifteenth century,” with a “soft and antique texture of the walls, and the autumnal colored roof tiles” as part of a “country setting.” The South Gate, with its red tile roof and ironwork gates, still looks pretty much the same 80 years later.
So does the Reptile House. Completed in 1928, there was much discussion about whether or not to open it to the public, as a kind of preview of things to come. This never occurred, however.
While the Reptile House is still around, today, it was closed in 2004, due to a deteriorating condition inside. Repairs were made, and it is now once again useful, but no reptiles are living in it anymore. During the last few years, at Holiday Magic time in December, Santa Claus has been greeting children here. Santa Claus in the Reptile House? It’s a good bet nobody back in 1927 ever guessed that would happen.
The 1927-drilled artesian well was certainly a necessity, as was the power house. Here the water was fed to the coal-fired steam heating system that would distribute warmth to every building in the zoo through miles of pipes running underground. Originally, the plan was that a siding track would be built, connecting up to the West Towns streetcar line, operating just on the other side of the southern cyclone fence. On this siding, trolley freight cars would be brought in full of coal for the power house. This never came to pass. Instead, the coal was trucked in.
The power house was still using coal-fired steam heating as late as 1961-62. It was at this time that the system was finally converted to gas power. As for the artesian well, it was in use until the 1990s, and the old powerhouse was razed around the same time.
One building, the “comfort station,” was an absolute necessity from day one. In today’s vernacular, it could be called a restroom or a bathroom, or any one of many other less attractive names. However, no one, not even in 1927, could deny the instant usefulness of this building.
While the buildings were going up, another plan was in its first stages. Though the North Gate entrance is, today, conceded to be the zoo’s main entrance, such was not always the case. The parking lot north of 31st Street came into being after the opening days of the zoo revealed that much more parking was going to be needed. By 1939, visitors were going through the tunnel under 31st Street.
You might say that the zoo had parking problems from the very beginning, even in 1927, way before it opened. An map by architect Edwin H. Clark is included in the back of the 1927 yearbook, and it takes into account the matter of parking.
First off, there is an automobile driving road that extends all around the perimeter of the zoo. This concept never stood the test of time, and after a few more years, fell out of favor. In retrospect, it is easy to see why. The “drive” gave people a chance, for free, to see any animals that happened to be outside. And if the people wanted to, they could park their cars at any one of eight different parking areas around the zoo. Then they could pay to go in at any one of eight separate entrance gates, not including the main one at the South Gate.
Then there was the matter of having to hire ticket sellers to man those eight separate entrances. And when winter came, was this “driving way” being plowed? And the parking lots, too? What about other maintenance on this road? While the “drive” was a nice idea, just having it around would cost a lot of extra time, energy and money.
The East, West, North, and South Malls were being graded, and even the center spot, which was to become the high-spraying Roosevelt Fountain in 1954, had its place on the 1927 map. Here is shown a round pool with what looks suspiciously like a fountain in its center. This same pool is shown in the photo of the 1926 zoo model on page 21 of the 1997-published book “Let the Lions Roar!,” by Andrea Ross. So having a fountain on the site seems to have been fated from the very beginning.
The zoo was really off and running back in 1927. The Depression was still a few years off, and everything looked rosy. Zoo officials were even forecasting a possible zoo opening date of 1930.
A few buildings had been completed, and much infrastructure work was either completed or well underway by the end of 1927. Yet to come were the Hagenbeck-inspired barless bear grottoes, surrounded by a moat. Some ideas, such as for a Goat Mountain right in the center of the North Mall, never came to pass.
Stanley Field, who was to be in charge of buildings for many years after, stated in the 1927 Yearbook that “Next year-1928-the money can all be spent on buildings, so that the Animal Committee can get some animals, and then there will be something to show the public.”
The newly hired Director, Edward H. Bean, and his son, Assistant Director Robert Bean, were more than ready to see to the collection of animals. On page 38 of the 1927 Yearbook is a photograph of Director Edward Bean and “the first inhabitants of the Chicago Zoological Park”-five young, unnamed baboons.
“Something to show the public.” Yes, and since 1927, the Brookfield Zoo has been dedicated to showing the public the many wonders of the animal kingdom, and where they are currently living.