The Prospect Park Zoo is a 12-acre (4.9 ha) zoo located off Flatbush Avenue on the eastern side of Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York City. Its precursor, the Menagerie, opened in 1890. The present facility first opened as a city zoo on July 3, 1935 and was part of a larger revitalization program of city parks, playgrounds and zoos initiated in 1934 by Parks Commissioner Robert Moses. It was built, in large part, through Civil Works Administration and Works Project Administration (WPA) labor and funding.
After 53 years of operation as a city zoo run by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, Prospect Park Zoo closed on June 1988 for reconstruction. The closure signaled the start of a five year, $37 million dollar renovation program, that, save for the exteriors of the 1930s-era buildings, completely replaced the zoo. It was rededicated on October 5, 1993 as the Prospect Park Wildlife Conservation Center, joining an integrated system of four zoos and one aquarium managed by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), all of which are accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA).
The Prospect Park Zoo presently offers children's educational programs, is engaged in restoration of endangered species populations, runs a Wildlife Theater and reaches out to the local community through volunteer programs. As of 2007, the zoo housed nearly 630 animals representing 141 species; it was visited by about 234,000 people in 2007.
Read more about Prospect Park Zoo: The Zoo Today, Evolution of Brooklyn Zoological Gardens
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“and the words never said,
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We sat in the car park till twenty to one
And now I’m engaged to Miss Joan Hunter Dunn.”
—Sir John Betjeman (1906–1984)
“...there was the annual Fourth of July picketing at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. ...I thought it was ridiculous to have to go there in a skirt. But I did it anyway because it was something that might possibly have an effect. I remember walking around in my little white blouse and skirt and tourists standing there eating their ice cream cones and watching us like the zoo had opened.”
—Martha Shelley, U.S. author and social activist. As quoted in Making History, part 3, by Eric Marcus (1992)