Griffith Park Zoo, referred to today as the Old Los Angeles Zoo, was a city-owned
zoo
A zoo (short for zoological garden; also called an animal park or menagerie) is a facility in which animals are kept within enclosures for public exhibition and often bred for conservation purposes.
The term ''zoological garden'' refers to z ...
in
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world ...
,
California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
that opened in 1912 and closed in 1966 with the opening of the new
Los Angeles Zoo
The Los Angeles Zoo and Botanical Gardens is a zoo founded in 1966 and located in Los Angeles, California. The city of Los Angeles owns the entire zoo, its land and facilities, and the animals. Animal care, grounds maintenance, construction, ed ...
. The abandoned site of the Griffith Park Zoo, complete with the ruins of animal enclosures, is now a picnic area featuring multiple hiking trails in
Griffith Park
Griffith Park is a large municipal park at the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains, in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. The park includes popular attractions such as the Los Angeles Zoo, the Autry Museum of the ...
.
History
The first zoo in Los Angeles was the Eastlake Zoo in East Los Angeles, which opened in 1885.
The Griffith Park Zoo opened in 1912 with a grand total of 15 animals. The new zoo was built on the site of
Griffith J. Griffith's defunct
Ostrich farm
The common ostrich (''Struthio camelus''), or simply ostrich, is a species of flightless bird native to certain large areas of Africa and is the largest living bird species. It is one of two extant species of ostriches, the only living members o ...
.
In the mid 1920s, film producer
William Nicholas Selig
William Nicholas Selig (March 14, 1864 – July 15, 1948) was a pioneer of the American motion picture industry. In 1896 he created one of the first film production companies, Selig Polyscope Company of Chicago. Selig produced a string of co ...
donated many of the animals from his studios, which he had attempted to convert into
an animal theme park, to the new zoo.
It was expanded in the 1930s by work crews from the
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...
.
Most of the enclosures were built in the caves-with-iron-bars style which was then standard for zoos.
As Los Angeles grew, the small Griffith Park Zoo was increasingly criticized as an "inadequate, ugly, poorly designed and under-financed collection of beat-up cages", despite drawing more than 2 million visitors a year. In 1958 the city passed an $8 million bond measure to create a brand new zoo.
Griffith Park Zoo closed in August 1966 and its animals were transferred to the new Los Angeles Zoo 2 miles away, which opened in November 1966. The animal enclosures, with the bars removed, were left as ruins;
picnic benches or tables were installed in some of them for park visitors.
References
External links
Zoo history with photo.Photos of zoo from USC Digital Library
{{Northwest Los Angeles
Former zoos
1912 establishments in California
1966 disestablishments in California
History of Los Angeles
Zoos established in 1912
Zoos disestablished in 1966