Quick answer
The Bronx Zoo is the 265-acre zoo in the Bronx, managed by the Wildlife Conservation Society, that opened on November 8, 1899 with 843 animals. Its keepers founded the American Bison Society in 1905, built the world's first zoo animal hospital in 1916, and today hold thousands of animals in big, naturalistic habitats.
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A zoo before most zoos
The Bronx Zoo opened on November 8, 1899, with 843 animals arranged in 22 exhibits. It was built by the New York Zoological Society, founded in 1895 and later renamed the Wildlife Conservation Society, on 265 acres of Bronx Park beside the Bronx River. It has kept the name longest for being big: it remains the largest metropolitan zoo in the United States. That scale is the point. Walk under the Asia Gate and down toward Astor Court, the line of Beaux-Arts pavilions that opened with the zoo, and you are standing at the oldest zoo buildings in the city, still grouped around a round sea lion pool.
The ark that saved the bison
Cage-building was never the real work. In 1905, when the American bison had been hunted from tens of millions to a few hundred animals, the zoo's scientists founded the American Bison Society here and began saving the species; within two years herds were going back out to the plains. The same instinct reached the animals at home. In 1916 the zoo opened the world's first animal hospital with a full-time veterinary staff, and it still runs a hospital on the grounds today. That pairing — rescue wild animals in the habitat, and care properly for the ones you keep — set the pattern every modern zoo has followed since.
What to do while you're here
Today the grounds hold thousands of animals in walk-through habitats: step into JungleWorld's steamy rain forest, cross the bridge over the Congo Gorilla Forest, or ride the monorail out across Wild Asia where the tigers pace. Finish at the Fordham Road gate, whose bronze Rainey Memorial Gates by Paul Manship were cast in 1934 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. Go on a weekday morning in spring, when the big cats are at their most active. Stand at the sea lion steps for five minutes and watch the pool work — few places in the city stay this close to the natural world.