The San Francisco Zoo

Two weekends ago, we checked out the SF Zoo.  Karie, Sam, and I actually chose this activity over shopping.  I know, shocking, right?

Yes.

This is truly even more shocking if you know me.  I am not a zoo person, an animal person, or a pet person (blame my allergies for that one).  While I have a soft spot for my owl collection, these guys, and the occasional narwhal, generally I remain nonplussed by the animal kingdom (although I do love me a good nature documentary).  I've been to plenty of zoos in my time, but going to the zoo would never be at the top of my list of things to do.

Unless, of course, that zoo is rumored to be rather defunct and decrepit.  Then, bring it on!

We were in the car heading to lunch at Nopalito when I floated the zoo idea.  Sam immediately brought out her Droid and began regaling us with tales of the SF Zoo's history.  In 1929, a man named Herbert Fleischhacker opened the zoo adjacent to the Fleischhacker Pool, which at the time was the country's largest swimming pool.  It was so large that lifeguards used kayaks to patrol it.

Although the zoo parking lot now takes up the space that the pool used to occupy, the poolhouse  still stands at the edge of the parking lot.  You have no idea how badly I want to get into that building to have a look around.  Especially when the Fleischhacker Pool Wikipedia entry warns that it is "currently derelict and occupied by the homeless."  Let me in!

{Fleischhacker Poolhouse}

Onto the zoo itself now.  I'll keep my commentary short and let my photos speak for themselves, but in general I liked the zoo's mix of old and new.  Initially I was concerned that it wasn't going to be defunct enough for me, but it turned out that most of the newer, gussied-up exhibits are towards the front.  The deeper you go into the zoo, the more likely it is that you'll see old, crumbling, empty concrete exhibits, overgrown foliage, and signs advertising abandoned animal houses.  You could say that my spirits improved considerably the farther we delved into the zoo.

{Sam, Karie, and Cole with a majestic giraffe posing in the background}

Before I discuss the awesome defunct buildings and exhibits we saw, let me say a few words about the live animal exhibits that we thought were cool.  First, the whole African area at the front of the zoo is pretty amazing and very beautiful.  Second, all four of us loved the gorilla family--four adult gorillas and one baby.  The baby bounded around, playing, swinging, and doing somersaults.  The adults lazed about in the grass, or in this guy's case, directly on top of an uncomfortable-looking stump:

We also liked the kangaroos, wallabees, polar bears, and penguins.  The most sad exhibit involved a lonely seal in a very outdated concrete pen.  I'm actually glad that I don't have a photo to remind me of that.

{A slightly dilapidated building within the zoo.  I'm not sure what it's used for.}

Onto the Pachyderm House, easily the most fascinating and rundown portion of the zoo.  This is a big, Art Deco building that appears to be empty now but used to house the elephants.  In fact, as we wandered around its perimeter (while I tried the doors in an attempt to find a way inside), Cole remembered visiting it as a kid when it still housed elephants.  That is just really cool.

After trying one of the big, faded red locked doors, Sam and I braved some overgrown foliage to peek into the windows of the Pachyderm house.  Here's what we saw.

This is just a portion of the enormous space inside the Pachyderm house.  You can see a lot of discarded items as well as the big concrete spaces towards the back that probably used to hold elephants.  Right on the other side of those pens are some empty outdoor exhibits that probably functioned as the elephants' outside habitat.  Makes me wonder what the zoo is planning for these spaces.

Onto the Lion House.  This building is really dated (think 1930s design mixed with a lot of 1970s tile) but is still in use.  The lions and tigers prowl around in pretty small cages along the edge that connect to their outdoor habitat.

I really enjoyed this framed photo of Old George on the wall of the Lion House:

Sorry, but places just don't memorialize things like this anymore.  It's sad.

As we left the Pachyderm and Lion Houses, we started seeing more empty pens and exhibits like the ones in the collage below.

On our way out, I spied this sign on the side of the currently-closed South American Tropical Rainforest building:

Very cool.  In fact, quite a few of the exhibits were marked with WPA plaques.

All in all, it was a very fun and interesting afternoon.  I really enjoyed visiting a zoo with a sense of history.  The elephant and lion houses, as well as the bear grottos, have been around since the 1930s.  And the exhibits with moats around the edges were some of the first bar-less zoo exhibits in the country.

But the SF Zoo isn't completely mired in the past.  In 2006, it named a baby bald eagle after Stephen Colbert.  If that isn't awesome I don't know what is.