The Central Park Zoo as Kevin Roche rebuilt it in 1988: the round sea lion pool in the middle of the garden with its rock island and its glass rim, the brick pergola on its piers all round, the Arsenal of 1851 on the east side, the penguin house in its cold blue light on the west, and the Delacorte Musical Clock on the arch to the Children's Zoo. The sea lions swim their loop and haul out on the rock, a keeper comes to the rail with a bucket at the real feeding hours and a crowd gathers, and on the hour and the half hour by the New York clock the bronze animals turn round the clock while two monkeys strike the bell. The New Yorkers hang on the piers of the pergola facing the pool, on the front of the Arsenal, beside the penguins and on the entrance walls.
A menagerie stood on the site from 1864, making this the second publicly owned zoo in the United States after Philadelphia's of 1859; the zoo of 1934 opened on December 2, 1934. The zoo reopened on August 8, 1988 after a rebuild by Kevin Roche of Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo Associates that cost 35 million dollars against a first budget of 8.3 million, three naturalistic habitats on 6.5 acres run by the Wildlife Conservation Society. The central sea lion pool is ringed by glass fencing; in 2016 the zoo held 1,487 animals of 163 species. The Delacorte Clock, a gift of George T. Delacorte unveiled in 1965 on the brick and limestone gateway by Fernando Texidor and Edward Coe Embury, carries Andrea Spadini's bronze animals, a bear on the tambourine, an elephant on the accordion, a goat on the horn, a hippo on the violin, a kangaroo on the French horn, a penguin on the drums and two monkeys at the bell, and plays every thirty minutes from 8 in the morning to 6. The Arsenal on the east side, by Martin E. Thompson, was built between 1847 and 1851 as a storehouse for the New York State Militia's arms and is the second oldest structure in the park after Blockhouse No. 1 of 1814. On the zoo's own schedule the sea lions are fed at 11:30 and 3:30 and the penguins at 10:40 and 2:30.
The round pool with its rock island and glass rim, four sea lions on their loop and one that comes to the glass when you do, the brick pergola on its piers, the Arsenal's brick front with its half octagonal towers, the penguin house glowing blue, the Delacorte Clock on its brick and limestone arch with the bear, the elephant, the goat, the hippo, the kangaroo and the penguin turning and the two monkeys with the bell, the keeper and the crowd at feeding time, the London planes, and the Fifth Avenue towers over the trees. Mood: feeding time, and the clock about to play. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.