November 8

On the 8th in 1899, the Bronx Zoo opened its doors to the public, boasting 22 exhibits and 843 animals. In 1905, with fewer than 1,000 American bison alive in the wild, William T. Hornaday, first director of the zoo, who possessed a deep and abiding interest in bison, started to build the Zoo’s herd. Hornaday was instrumental in obtaining national protection for the American bison, a species decimated by hunting in the 19th century. Beginning in 1907, the Bronx Zoo began shipping New York bison to new homes at the Oklahoma Wichita Mountain Preserve. Eventually the Bronx Zoo, under Hornaday’s guidance, would send bison to refuges in Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska. The descendants of the New York bison are easy to pick out in the herd; they’re the ones with the attitudes and the sneers.

The Bronx Zoo is built on 240 acres of property donated to New York City by tobacco magnate Pierre Lorillard IV. The original pavilions of the Bronx Zoo were designed by George Lewis Heins and Christopher Grant La Farge, who were also instrumental in the designing of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in New York. The zoo shares the park with the New York Botanical Gardens, which opened in 1891.