The fabled aquarium and elephant exhibit are here, and the lion house is merely a building. How much and yet little has changed!
Interesting to see that this zoo once had a small mammal building on the famous Historic Hill, the only of the buildings in that area to not remain today or have a direct successor. I wonder when it went down?
The "Small Mammal Wing" (13E) was always part of the Reptile House (12E) and in the 1970s that wing was converted into yet more space for cold-blooded creatures. It's not a separate building.
The Aquatic House (16W) that held penguins and walrus here, then held penguins, fish and Baikal seals in 1978 (see my map in the gallery) and by 1979 had been converted into "Zoo Rangers" for young kids (see my other map in the gallery). Fascinating!
@JVM To put more visual perspective on what @snowleopard said: the lower level hallway of the Reptile House where the large reptiles are (crocodilians, etc) is where the Small Mammal Wing used to be.
@Coelacanth18 Looking at this map from the current zoo layout perspective, does River's Edge now cover the area with the 1973 children's zoo, penguin house, and elephant-hippo-rhino house?
Are the hoof stock paddocks, the bird, reptile, and primate houses, and the central lakes and original aviary the only areas on this map that still are in the modern zoo?
@DavidBrown The pachyderm area and penguin house is now River's Edge, yes. I think the old Children's Zoo is in the same location as the recent one, and the planned renovation.
The exhibits/buildings you named are more or less the remaining parts of the zoo from the 1970s, although a lot of areas (nearly all of them, actually) were replaced with new exhibits for roughly the same inhabitants - Jungle of the Apes replaced the old ape house, Big Cat Country replaced the old lion house, bear grottoes redone for bears, etc.
If anyone has a timeline for when any of the older exhibits were closed or were renovated, I would be really interesting to find out more. I only did a more superficial glance so very possible I overlooked things but it seemed hard to find a good timeline online.
@JVM The zoo used to have a timeline for many of these exhibits on their website, with many dates referenced on Wikipedia. Unfortunately the website has changed since then and Wayback doesn't go quite far enough to confirm much information. That being said, if the info on Wikipedia is indeed verbatim from the old source:
- Big Cat Country replaced the Lion House in 1976 (also see here: Zoo Map - 1976 - ZooChat). The Bird, Reptile and Primate buildings were all renovated in the mid-to-late 1970's also.
- Jungle of the Apes opened in 1986, replacing the ape house; Fragile Forest (i.e. chimpanzees and orangutans being outdoors) didn't open until 2005.
- River's Edge was opened between 1999 and 2002, so the Aquatic House and Elephant House couldn't have lasted longer than to roughly the mid-1990's.
- Not sure when the Pheasantry was demolished and replaced with the current Bird Gardens, but it also would have been sometime between 1980 and the late 1990's.
Map and info from 1979: Zoo Map - 1979 - ZooChat
Maybe @snowleopard has more to add - got any old maps or guidebooks from the 1980's or 1990's?
@Coelacanth18 has done a great job summarizing the history of one of America's top 5 zoos and I don't have any more maps or guides to add. I did upload more than a dozen Saint Louis Zoo maps and at least we have a solid foundation to look at in terms of how the zoo has progressed through the years.
Thank you. I had figured out some of those approximate dates from reading the maps but one of the ones I had completely missed was Jungle of the Apes and Fragile Forest, and that was one of the ones I was most interested in finding out as a result.
I would be very curious to find out more about the Aquatic House and Elephant House and their transition to River's Edge should any new information become available.
