The Kansas City Zoo started in this building in Swope Park. What’s it look like now?
By the late 1800s, Kansas City was beginning to see itself as a major metropolitan area. City leaders believed that to fully become one a zoo would be needed.
The Kansas City Zoological Society, formed in 1907, had grand ambitions—to build the largest zoological gardens in the world. And Swope Park, sitting on land bequeathed by Colonel Thomas Swope in 1896, seemed like the best place to do it.
Even though it was a long ways from the center of town.
When the Kansas City Zoological Gardens opened in December 1909, streetcars delivered thousands of curious visitors to its doors. There they gazed upon lions, monkeys, a wolf, a fox, a coyote, a badger, a lynx, an eagle and other birds, including geese.
The ornately gabled Animal House featured both an indoor walkway, and outdoor cages that lined one side of the building.
In 1912, the zoo began a series of expansions which continued for decades, often using the park’s rugged terrain to simulate habitats from around the world.
Today, the fieldstone building where it all began is still in use. It now houses the Tropics exhibit at the Kansas City Aquarium and Zoo. But thanks to a 1969 storm that destroyed the structure’s distinctive roof, only the original walls remain.
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Looking for more Kansas City history?
The zoo’s iconic space age structure, the Great Ape House, was torn down in 2015
Over the years, Loose Park has also been a Civil War battlefield and a golf course
One of the city’s worst natural disasters was 1977’s Brush Creek flood
This story was originally published October 30, 2024 at 5:00 AM.