REPORT OF THE DIRECTOR OF THE ZOOLOGICAL 



PARK. 



"When a city is so rich in park lands that such a magnificent 

 temple of nature as South Bronx Park can lie for fourteen years 

 practically unknown and wholly unappreciated, that city is to be 

 envied. To persons living elsewhere, the profound ignorance of 

 the majority of our people respecting the public land now known 

 as the Zoological Park is one of the wonders of New York. Even 

 to-day, notwithstanding all that has been published of descriptions 

 and maps, a large percentage of the residents of this city who set 

 out to make their first visit to this tract strike a mile wide of the 

 mark and land in the upper end of the Botanical Gardens. 



Of all the 4,500 acres of public parks acquired in the annexed 

 district during 1884 no other portion has remained for all that 

 period so thoroughly unknown, so overlooked, and so neglected 

 as the 261 acres of South Bronx Park. The last serious question 

 as to its immediate future was settled on July 27, 1898, when 

 Mayor Van YVyck and the Board of Estimate and Apportionment 

 appropriated the first instalment of the city's fund for ground im- 

 provements, and made it immediately available. 



On August 1 the Zoological Society submitted to the Board 

 of Parks its plans and specifications for those improvements, and 

 without further ceremony came into possession, as custodian, of 

 the allotted land. At that time the site of the Zoological Park 

 was an unbroken wilderness, to the eye almost as wild and un- 

 kempt as the heart of the Adirondacks. It was a jungle of ragged 

 forest trees, brambles, bushes, and tall weeds. There were three 

 extensive bogs, in any one of which an elephant might easily have 

 become entombed. Poison dogwood and poison ivy grew in many 

 places, and a deadly sewer stream flowed for nearly half a mile 

 on the surface of what is now Birds' Valley. Throughout the 

 whole 260 acres there was not a drop of drinking water available, 

 not a seat, sidewalk, nor shelter of any kind other than those which 

 nature had provided. Worse than all else for personal comfort, 



