The photo of the interior of the Monkey house is from 1967, and the postcard below is from an unknown date.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Springfield, Mass. Zoo--Vintage Monkey House
Posted by
Wade G. Burck
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3 comments:
Wade, I’m getting caught up on my blog reading this weekend and particularly enjoyed discovering your views of the Springfield zoo, always known locally as the Forest Park Zoo. I grew up just across the city line in Longmeadow and directly adjacent to Forest Park. The road through the zoo was always the more leisurely way to get into some parts of the city from where I lived so, as a toddler, it was the preferred route for me to have my mother drive because Snowball was the big attraction at the zoo throughout the 1950s, not only for me but much of the city. I have vague recollections of the pride the city had when it built the cage with a pool for Snowball. I believe he rated a front page obit when he died in the 1960s. As I recall the building with the indoor/outdoor cages housed a lion, bear, etc., in the 1950s.
The director of Forest Park and the zoo in the 1920s was the father of the legendary Dr. Seuss. He grew up in the same neighborhood as my mother but he was six years older and so not quite close enough in age to be playmates. Their homes were near the park. Dr. Seuss’s first book, "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street," refers to a street not too far from Forest Park.
I remember as well the arrival of the baby elephant and the local newspaper contest to name the animal. It is a feminized version of Morgan, the famous breed that came from the Springfield area and one of the earliest breeds developed in America (Justin Morgan and his horse soon moved to Vermont where the stallion became a prolific breeder and, hence, has a strong association with that state). Pony Express horses were Morgans, the horse served both sides in the Civil War (Stonewall Jackson rode one and Phil Sheridan’s famous ride was on a Morgan), and the only survivor of the Custer Massacre was a Morgan horse.
Do you know if Morganetta is still at the LA zoo?
Dick Flint
Baltimore
Dick,
Do you remember Jiggs, the Chimpanzee? Both his and Snowballs mounts are in the Springfield Museum(Snowball was mounted by the Director of the zoo.) Jiggs was shot after escaping from the Monkey/Lion/Bear House, and Snowball was shot by a policeman after mauling a resident who had gone under the barrier to pet her. He(Snowball) lived a number of years after the incident, but died due to complications. Snowball arrived at the zoo in 1951 as a three-month old. Air Force Captain William. McGeary had traded a box of fish hooks to an Eskimo for the orphaned cub, and he persuaded a pilot to board an additional passenger to a flight to Westover from Goose Air Base, Labrador. McGeary donated Snowball to the Forest Park Zoo.
Morganetta the elephant was named after Morgan O’Connell, who had campaigned to add an elephant to the Forest Park Zoo. She was brought to Springfield from Thailand in 1964 as an infant. As she was kept on a chain most of her life at the zoo, in I believe 1979 the American Humane Society raised such a stink that she became one of the first elephants to be transferred to a different zoo, due to living conditions. I don't know if she is still alive, or not. Maybe one of our elephant Historians, (are you listening RJR, or Dan Koehl) could answer that. I remember the folks in the community, including her keeper wrote to the paper stating that if she was moved she would die of a "broken heart?????"
Springfield's "way back history" is very colorful and includes an well known circus and zoo animal dealer using the zoo as a place to keep "stock" until it was sold.
Forest Park, as many small town zoo's(including my beloved Bismark and Minot zoo's) have a bleak and dismal past. But like the tea cup monkey's, and "Sea Monkey" families for sale in the back of Roy Rogers comic books for a few dollars, they whetted the appetites for many of today's great zoologists and animal people, who are continuing to make the world of captive animals the best it can be.
Wade
What year was the monkey house built (at Forest Park Zoo in Springfield, MA)?
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