Prospect Park Zoo

Prospect Park worked a little zoo in the late 1800s. An Annual Report section in 1896, for instance, points of interest the "live stock" the Department of Brooklyn Parks possessed: 59 sheep, 28 deer, a wild ox, a dairy animals, three bears, a panther, two raccoons, ten rabbits, one puppy, one falcon, eight pea fowls, eight birds, 39 Chinese geese, 15 Egyptian geese, 7 Muscovy ducks, four regular ducks, and three turkeys. This gathering of creatures was formalized as the Prospect Park Zoo on Flatbush Avenue that opened to people in general on July 3, 1935. At that point as now, an exquisite court and seal pool fill in as the point of convergence of the semi-round fan-like format of the zoo, its geometric plan particular in the way it withdraws from a customary zoo configuration organized around a wandering way through creature living spaces. The first creatures incorporated an elk, water bucks, deer, and elands.