The Longfellow Zoological Gardens (sometimes simply called the Longfellow Gardens) was a zoo

Zoo

A zoological garden, zoological park, menagerie, or zoo is a facility in which animals are confined within enclosures, displayed to the public, and in which they may also be bred....

 and garden

Garden

A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the display, cultivation, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The garden can incorporate both natural and man-made materials. The most common form today is known as a residential garden, but the term garden has...

 in Minneapolis's Minnehaha neighborhood in Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

, United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

History

A Minneapolis businessman and showman named Robert "Fish" Jones first bought a property near the edge of downtown Minneapolis in 1886. He converted the 3 acres (12,140.6 m²) property into a zoo for the animals which he had collected since his arrival in Minneapolis in 1876. These included lion

Lion

The lion is one of the four big cats in the genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae. With some males exceeding 250 kg in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger...

s, jaguar

Jaguar

The jaguar is a big cat, a feline in the Panthera genus, and is the only Panthera species found in the Americas. The jaguar is the third-largest feline after the tiger and the lion, and the largest in the Western Hemisphere. The jaguar's present range extends from Southern United States and Mexico...

s, leopard

Leopard

The leopard , Panthera pardus, is a member of the Felidae family and the smallest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera, the other three being the tiger, lion, and jaguar. The leopard was once distributed across eastern and southern Asia and Africa, from Siberia to South Africa, but its...

s, bear

Bear

Bears are mammals of the family Ursidae. Bears are classified as caniforms, or doglike carnivorans, with the pinnipeds being their closest living relatives. Although there are only eight living species of bear, they are widespread, appearing in a wide variety of habitats throughout the Northern...

s, cattle

Cattle

Cattle are the most common type of large domesticated ungulates. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae, are the most widespread species of the genus Bos, and are most commonly classified collectively as Bos primigenius...

 and a camel

Camel

A camel is an even-toed ungulate within the genus Camelus, bearing distinctive fatty deposits known as humps on its back. There are two species of camels: the dromedary or Arabian camel has a single hump, and the bactrian has two humps. Dromedaries are native to the dry desert areas of West Asia,...

. The amount of animals he kept, however, soon grew and Jones was forced to move from the property on Hennepin Avenue

Hennepin Avenue

Hennepin Avenue is a major street in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. It runs from Lakewood Cemetery , north through the Uptown District of Southwest Minneapolis, through the former "Bottleneck" area west of Loring Park, through the North Loop in the city center, to Northeast Minneapolis and...

 to an area in south Minneapolis. Then, in 1906, he opened the zoo to the public. He also built a house

Longfellow House

The Longfellow House in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, is a 2/3 scale replica of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's home in Cambridge, Massachusetts...

 styled after the home of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was an American poet and educator whose works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline...

, where he lived for the rest of his life.

In 1908, in a ceremony presided over by Minneota Representative Frank Nye

Frank Nye

Frank Mellen Nye was a Representative from Minnesota; born in Shirley, Piscataquis County, Maine; moved to Wisconsin with his parents, who settled on a farm near River Falls, Pierce County, in 1855; attended the common schools and the local academy in River Falls; taught school for several years...

, Jones and a group of others were honored by a letter from Alice M. Longfellow, the daughter of the poet, noting her wish to some day come and visit the gardens. She never came, however.

Collection

The zoo was popular, and continued to grow as Jones eventually added zebra

Zebra

Zebras are several species of African equids united by their distinctive black and white stripes. Their stripes come in different patterns unique to each individual. They are generally social animals that live in small harems to large herds...

s, monkey

Monkey

A monkey is a primate, either an Old World monkey or a New World monkey. There are about 260 known living species of monkey. Many are arboreal, although there are species that live primarily on the ground, such as baboons. Monkeys are generally considered to be intelligent. Unlike apes, monkeys...

s, orangutan

Orangutan

Orangutans are the only exclusively Asian genus of extant great ape. The largest living arboreal animals, they have proportionally longer arms than the other, more terrestrial, great apes. They are among the most intelligent primates and use a variety of sophisticated tools, also making sleeping...

s and a polar bear

Polar Bear

The polar bear is a bear native largely within the Arctic Circle encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and surrounding land masses. It is the world's largest land carnivore and also the largest bear, together with the omnivorous Kodiak Bear, which is approximately the same size...

 which was said to have come from Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

. He also had a wide array of birds from the Grey Crowned Crane

Grey Crowned Crane

The Grey Crowned Crane is a bird in the crane family Gruidae. It occurs in dry savannah in Africa south of the Sahara, although it nests in somewhat wetter habitats. This animal does not migrate....

 to the flamingo

Flamingo

Flamingos or flamingoes are gregarious wading birds in the genus Phoenicopterus , the only genus in the family Phoenicopteridae...

 to the stork

Stork

Storks are large, long-legged, long-necked wading birds with long, stout bills. They belong to the family Ciconiidae. They are the only family in the biological order Ciconiiformes, which was once much larger and held a number of families....

s. The zoo was also known for its seals

Pinniped

Pinnipeds or fin-footed mammals are a widely distributed and diverse group of semiaquatic marine mammals comprising the families Odobenidae , Otariidae , and Phocidae .-Overview: Pinnipeds are typically sleek-bodied and barrel-shaped...

. A man-eating tiger

Man-eater

Man-eater is a colloquial term for an animal that preys upon humans. This does not include scavenging. Although human beings can be attacked by many kinds of animals, man-eaters are those that have incorporated human flesh into their usual diet...

, personally captured by animal collector Frank Buck

Frank Buck (animal collector)

Frank Howard Buck was a hunter and "collector of wild animals," as well as a movie actor, director, writer and producer...

 in Johor

Johor

Johor is a Malaysian state, located in the southern portion of Peninsular Malaysia. It is one of the most developed states in Malaysia. The state capital city and royal city of Johor is Johor Bahru, formerly known as Tanjung Puteri...

e, was part of the collection.

Later years

The zoo continued to prosper, although complaints from neighbors about noise and smell were perpetual. The zoo continued to draw crowds, however, with intriguing wildlife for adults and monkeys, which was the center point of the zoo for many children.

In 1930, Jones died. His family tried to keep his zoo open, but failed and the zoo had to be closed down. Many of the animals were sold or given the Como Zoo in St. Paul and in 1934, the land where the zoo once stood was given to the Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board. It was rumored that several seals escaped the zoo over the Minnehaha Falls

Minnehaha Falls

Minnehaha Creek is a tributary of the Mississippi River located in Hennepin County, Minnesota that extends from Lake Minnetonka in the west and flows east for 22 miles through several suburbs west of Minneapolis and then through south Minneapolis. Including Lake Minnetonka, the watershed for the...

into the nearby creek, although this was never proved.

The land where the zoo once stood is now residential.