Children: Barnyard on Fifth Avenue

Any adult knows that a zoo is a place where animals look at the people. Children, on the other hand, like to look at the animals—and. better yet, touch them if they can. Trouble is, many zoos are so arranged that the only things within a child’s reach are balloons, peanuts, popcorn and restrooms. In Manhattan’s Central Park last week, kids.flocked by the thousands into a brand-new zoo, built just for them.

Donated to the city by former Governor and Mrs. Herbert H. Lehman, the zoo is a brightly colored fairyland that is designed to make adults feel just a little bit as if they were intruding in somebody else’s territory (see color). A grownup must be accompanied by a child to get past the moppet-height turnstile (admission: 10¢). The coin-operated dispensers for animal food are knee-high, and the waste receptacles are painted to look like enormous green and yellow frogs (FEED ME PAPER) and big brown bulldogs (I EAT ANYTHING).

A large “contactring” is full of rabbits, ducks and chickens that the children can fondle and lug around to their hearts’ content. The houses of the Three Little Pigs—one of straw, another of sticks, and a third of non-huffable brick—sure enough hold three pigs. In Old MacDonald’s Farm roam a placid Jersey cow and her calf, a few llamas, a couple of goats and a black baby yak. Behind the barn is a run for sheep, roosters, hens and geese, and there is a pen for three raccoons that hide in a log. The children can also poke around in a good-sized Noah’s Ark, where the rabbits sleep at night, a candy-striped Hansel and Gretel gingerbread house (no witch), a turreted castle with winding stairs (and “Stoop” signs for the adults), and a walk-in birdcage. In Mouseville, built to resemble a big cheese, they can study scurrying white mice, and in the Hurdy-Gurdy House, a monkey swings to music. Best of all. they can slide down a “rabbit hole” just like Alice, and walk into the mouth of a huge whale just like Jonah.

By week’s end more than 40.000 kids had roamed the zoo to leave their handprints on all the creatures (“Mom-meeeeee! Lookit! I’m touching a bunny!”). In fact, the bunnies got such enthusiastic huggings from small admirers that they had to be retired, in shifts, to sheltered pens to recuperate.