1908 St. Louis Zoo Bear Pit - St. Louis MO - Photos Then and Now on Waymarking.com

In 1908 the St. Louis Zoo took over Fairground Park. The St. Louis Zoo then moved to Forrest Park and all that remains of the zoo buildings at Fairgrounds Park is the front facade bear pit.

The THEN photo is from (visit link) and labeled {bear pit facade in an undated photo – courtesy of stlouis.missouri.org}

Since the zoo at this location was only opened a short time my guess the photo is from 1908 or 1909.

"For many St. Louis area residents, Fairground Park is a faded memory, or an unrecognized part of the city and its history. Before St. Louis was nationally and internationally recognized for Forest Park and the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition, the city hosted the annual Agricultural and Mechanical Fair (1856-1902), drawing crowds from around the country. The 132-acre Fairground Park is situated in north St. Louis at the intersection of North Grand Boulevard and Natural Bridge Avenue.

The land that is now Fairground Park was the site of this fair for half a century. The city’s website for the park describes the old fairgrounds, which included exhibition halls, a racetrack and jockey club, and the largest amphitheater in the country at the time it was built. In 1876, St. Louis’s first zoological garden was constructed on the fairgrounds of the Agricultural and Mechanical Fair. The city’s original zoo included a monkey house, a carnivore house, and a bear pit, among other attractions.[1] In the space that is now Fairground Park, St. Louis established itself as one of the country’s preeminent cities.

In 1908, six years after the last fair was held on these fairgrounds, the city purchased the land for use as a public park. The renowned landscape architect, and the designer of the grounds for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, George Kessler, was responsible for the design of Fairground Park. While most of the fair’s structures were removed, the façade of the bear pit from the city’s original zoo remained as part of Kessler’s park design. Despite the dismantling of the old zoological garden’s structures, between 1910 and 1913, Fairground Park was considered as a potential site on which the Zoological Society of St. Louis might have established the Saint Louis Zoo that area residents know and love today.[2]

Today, the only remnant of the fair and the only reminder of the park’s history as a fairground is this façade. It sits at the northwest corner of Grand Boulevard and Natural Bridge Avenue. The city’s website claims that the façade “still guards the park’s main entrance like a medieval castle and [serves] as a reminder of the glory days of the popular St. Louis fair.”[3] However, the façade is in need of significant repairs and lacks any signage that reveals the history of this feature or of the park. This picture, taken on November 10, 2010, shows boarded doorways and broken windows and reveals a lack of care in the maintenance of the aesthetic appeal of this piece of St. Louis’s history. Moreover, the appearance of the façade hardly encourages visitors to enter the park as its solid face appears more imposing than inviting." (visit link)

Year photo was taken: 1908

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