A Grant Will Help Preserve Images of the Early Days of the Bronx Zoo

On November 8, 1899, the Bronx Zoo opened to the public.

It was a production. The city ran special express trains to Fordham, where hundreds of people gathered at the park’s main entrance on Pelham Avenue and Southern Boulevard to hear an address from Henry Fairfield Osborn, the future president of the New York Zoological Society, known today as the Wildlife Conservation Society. Before the gates opened, he told the crowd:

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