The Central Park Zoo is a small 6.5-acre (2.6 ha) zoo located on Central Park in New York City. It is part of an integrated system of four zoos and the New York Aquarium managed by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), and is accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA).
The zoo began in the 1860s as a menagerie, making it the first official zoo to open in New York. The zoo was modified in 1934, with the addition of many new buildings ranged in a quadrangle around the sea lion pool. (The zoo from this era has been commonly known as the "1934 Zoo" or "Robert Moses Zoo".) Finally, the zoo was renovated in the mid-1980s and reopened in 1988, replacing the old-fashioned cages with naturalistic environments.
Read more about Central Park Zoo: Areas, History, The Zoo in Popular Culture
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“The zoo cannot but disappoint. The public purpose of zoos is to offer visitors the opportunity of looking at animals. Yet nowhere in a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. At the most, the animal’s gaze flickers and passes on. They look sideways. They look blindly beyond.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)