The WPA and Zoos

Did you know that the WPA helped create, repair, and improve zoos? Additionally, WPA workers painted posters encouraging people to visit zoos, and even wrote a book about the zoo, "Who's Who In The Zoo." (Images below are courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.)

"Every time I go over to Central Park, I walk into the Children's Zoo. This was built during the Depression by WPA workers. It's an absolutely lovely place. I go into the park often. And I cannot help remembering--look, this came out of the Depression. Because men were out of work, because they were given a way to earn money, good things were created."

--Herman Shumlin, Broadway producer and director, in Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression (Studs Terkel, 1970).