Michigan City Washington Park Zoo New Deal (#0095)

One of those odd consequences in life…. It was only by happenstance that I was down at the coast in Michigan City in the first place, so I hadn’t done any research on what I would be seeing – if I had known this when I was there, I would have put much more time into exploring.

Some of the forested area behind the brick buildings is the Washington Park Zoo (the tower is in the zoo). The zoo was started in the late 1920’s and most of the work on it was in the early 1930’s, thus per their website: “...the Washington Park Zoo is the only zoo in Indiana completely designed and landscaped by the WPA [a New Deal agency] and its predecessor agencies, FERA and CWA (Civil Works Administration). The Zoo and surrounding Washington Park has the most comprehensive collection of WPA-designed and built leisure facilities for the public in Indiana.”

washingtonparkzoo.com/about/history