Central Park Zoo

No zoo was envisaged in Olmsted and Vaux's original "Greensward" design for Central Park, but the Central Park menagerie evolved from gifts of exotic pets and other animals informally given to the Park, beginning, apparently, with a bear and some swans deposited near New York's arsenal on the edge of Central Park in 1859. It wasn't until 1864 that it received charter confirmation from New York's assembly. The informally developed menagerie was at first housed in the Arsenal building that predated the Park, located at Fifth Avenue facing East 64th Street. It was given more permanent quarters behind the Arsenal building in 1870. When the Central Park Menagerie was officially founded in 1864, it was the United States's second publicly owned zoo, after the Philadelphia Zoo, founded in 1859.

In 1934, to properly house the zoo, neo-Georgian brick and limestone zoo buildings ranged in a quadrangle round the sealion pool were designed by Aymar Embury II, architect for the Triborough Bridge and the Henry Hudson Bridge (WPA Guide). The famous sealion pool itself was originally designed by Charles Schmieder. For its day the sealion pool was considered advanced because the architect actually studied the habits of sealions and incorporated this knowledge into the design.