Central Park Zoo: Origins
Built in 1848, the Arsenal building actually predates Central Park by some ten years.  The designers of Central Park, Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmstead had wanted to tear the Arsenal down, but the city insisted on keeping it in tact.  So, having landscaped the whole park around the Arsenal, the city needed to find a new use for it.

In the 1860′s, expeditions, both public and private, began to return with exotic animals, and no one knew where to put them.  An admirer gave General Sherman a pair of Musk Oxen which he donated to the city.  Along with others, they formed the basis for the Central Park Zoo – then called the Menagerie.

When the famously corrupt Tammany Hall machine took over the city, they let the park go to waste.  Some of the cages didn’t even have doors.  Instead of fixing them, Tammany simply paid a guard to sit outside with a shotgun and shoot any wandering animals.  The animals were also made to earn their keep.  At the Central Park Zoo, the animals were put on notice: no more leisurely life and easy peanuts for them.

The crooked stooges on Tammany’s pay-roll hooked up this poor camel to mow the lawn for them on Sheep’s Meadow.  I wonder what job they had in mind for the buffalo?

Just below is a photograph of the Arsenal from 1860 just as the landscaping of the park was completed around it.  Notice the shrubs of bushes and trees planted along the path in the foreground.

To the left of the Arsenal is the 65th Street Tranverse, which intersects with Fifth Avenue behind the building.  Notice the solitary wooden house along the dirt-paved Fifth Avenue.  Back then, Fifth Avenue was not the exclusive home of the rich that it is today.

Sheep’s Meadow and Tavern on the Green

For many decades, Tavern on the Green was America’s highest grossing restaurant.  But it actually started out much more humbly, as  a sheepfold, or barn, for the sheep that grazed on the meadow.  When the Great Depression hit, the sheep were removed to the Bronx Zoo for their own safety – lest they be eaten by the homeless squatters occupying the park.  The Meadow became the site of a haggard collection of shacks called “Hooverville” – named after the president everyone blamed for the Great Depression.

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