For Guillaume--Unknown elephant house in yesterday's thread.

Next to animal training, zoological architecture is the most fascinating thing in the world to me. Over the years when I would find or buy an old picture of a zoo in some antique book store or flea market, my boy's would ask, "Pops, why did you buy that stupid picture, there is nothing in it?" I would patiently explain, "yeah, but there is a fence post in the corner, or a rock formation at the bottom, or the corner of a building, so it might be an old zoo picture." They would just roll their eye's, and tolerate my stupidity, God love them. My guess, and I may be wrong also, at the picture below would have been the Berlin Zoo, based on a couple of things. We know it took a hell a whacking during the Berlin bombings, and needed to be rebuilt, although the picture below look's to be long after the war, by the clothes the people are wearing. But if you compare the photo's here, with the photo below, you will not that the window's at the corner of the over hang match up perfectly. The window's at the end of the building have apparently been covered and bricked over. Note the thick frame enclosing the window's at the top edge of the over hang. It appears to be the same size frame at the top edge of the overhang in these pictures. Just under the over hang, on the left below, you will note a door with a slot, which lines up perfectly with the door on the left, under the overhang in these two photos. Bricking over windows is a realistically easy process, while "moving a door" is more difficult. I am not sure, but it also look's like the exhibit in these pictures has been "expanded" from an oval shape, with the addition of the "walk around" with the steps down and up. Giving elephants room to "wander" was not the thought of the day, and I think that innovation was added later, with a facing of "realistic" rocks, and the "protective barred fence" moved back. They may have taken the idea for the different brick facing from the moron who designed the London Zoo elephant house, Hugh Casson of Casson and Condor(Condor should have been the clue it was going to be a dead issue one day LOL), who offered the "architect's alibi of the century" when folks wised up and said, "what they hell have you done," and the Hughster explained, "I envisioned a herd of elephants standing in a forest clearing, tall and stately. Note the texture of their skin, which I skillfully incorporated into the facade on the wall's of the elephant house!!!!!" But it ended up being a world class "baboon doniker". LOL It was a bad time for the ZSL Rebis. They were still reeling from the Lubetkin Penguin Pool and Gorilla House debacle,(forget selling Jumbo to the Colonies) and then Hugh lay's this "folly" on them. They figured their only hope of some dignity was Lord Snowdon and his mates Cedric Price and Frank Newby coming through with the aviary. They must have puked when they saw their reproduction of a Klingon landscape. Decimus Burton died way too early and left the folks at the ZSL on their own, to wander around aimlessly in the world of zoological architecture. Maybe we should get your mate's at the London Zoo a copy of one of David Hancocks book's for Christmas, Rebis? LOL