Print Size: 24" x 36" (Frame Size: 24 X 36")
The 227’ x 114’ Elephant House at the National Zoo is the third on the site, built in 1937 with funds from the WPA. It was designed by Edwin Hill Clark, a Chicago architect known for his human residences but also experienced at Lincoln Park Zoo in Illinois. Although the exterior was kept simple to reduce costs, the entrances include great limestone arches with robust quoins -- classical details meant to signify the refinement of intellectual capacity and in particular, the elephant’s fabled long memory. The building reflects the changing philosophies of the late 1930s as zoos were transformed from collectors of animals to conservators of species. At center is a large skylit space from which the public could look into the encircling animal enclosures, each with rear access to a moated outside yard. Above each cell is an aluminum relief of a modern pachyderm or a prehistoric ancestor, furthering the zoo’s educational goals by reference to Darwin’s theories of evolution and then-advancing studies of natural history. The thrill of the exotic is heightened by ramps to close-up viewing platforms at either end where the four elephant enclosures are flanked by homes for a hippo on the east and a giraffe on the west, curiously both the same height. People liked the simplified classical building with its Art Moderne public areas; the elephants not so much. By the 1960s the facility was deemed obsolete and extensively renovated for a more natural habitat.
