J.D. Porter's Blog, page 12

Could a long-ago circus accident in Griffin, Georgia be connected to the founding of Zoo Atlanta?

[image error]For the tightrope walker, it was nearly a tragedy. While performing his act for Hall’s Circus on Friday, March 15th, 1889, his rope came loose. Maybe I’ve read too many mysteries—watched too many movies—but this story stirs my imagination. I could understand if he lost his balance or a sudden gust of wind came up, but not “his rope came loose”. How did that happen? Making sure your rope is securely fastened would have been covered in rope-walking 101.

Did the rope-rigger not tie the knot tight enough? Did the performer himself forget to check it? Was he impaired by drink, or was it sabotage? Perhaps a jealous lover tried to do him in. According to the brief story in the newspaper, he fell “headforemost through the top of the canvas” and “escaped with only a few light bruises”.

To make matters worse, the accident may have been the final performance of the Hall & Bingley Circus. It occurred in Griffin Georgia, about forty miles south of Atlanta. Four days later, on Tuesday, March 19th, the Hall and Bingley Circus was stranded in Atlanta—bankrupt.

I wonder if the accident and the bankruptcy were related—a symptom, perhaps, of mismanagement. Or was it a reflection of the quality of the circus? Whatever the explanation, Hall & Bingley’s misfortune was about to turn into a permanent attraction for the City of Atlanta.

 

National Dog Day and your Health

[image error]Today, August 26th, 2019 is National dog Day. So imagine my delight at finding this story in Newsweek magazine that says, according to a recent study published by the Mayo Clinic, owning a dog could boost our heart health.

“Dog owners,” according to the study, “were more likely to exercise, have an ideal diet and blood glucose levels than those who didn’t.”

These findings are hardly surprising to a dog lover, but they do cause me to reflect on my recent book, The View from a Wagon and its five lessons for living life.

To say I love dogs would be an understatement. Dogs have been a part of my life since the day I was born. My childhood dogs were yard dogs that never came in the house, but in those days, children seldom went in the house either, except to eat or sleep. Dogs ran with us—or we ran with them. In my adult life, my wife and I have always shared our home with one or two dogs as part of the family, and I still grieve for those that have passed.

So, when I saw this study, I thought about my time on the mule wagon and the lessons I learned from watching the dogs—the pointers that race around looking for birds and the retriever that sits on my lap when she is not retrieving. Their joy for life and their ability to live in the moment is infectious and provides a lesson for humans. Perhaps we should spend less time worrying about the past and fearing the future. Somehow, we need to figure out how to just live in the present or, put another way, to seize the day.

We also need to consider how dogs might teach us to show kindness to the people around us. Humans, like dogs, are social creatures by nature. We live in packs that rely on visual cues and olfactory scents to keep order. Is the tail up like a flag or tucked down between the back legs? Are the teeth bared, or is he trying to lick you in the face?

When the wagon arrives in the morning to load guests and guns, there are handshakes all around as we introduce ourselves with smiles and laughter. Who will be hunting together? Will they be on wagon number one or wagon number two? Who wants to ride a horse and who wants to sit in the wagon? How have you been? Good to see you again. We humans do love our rituals. If we were dogs, we’d be wagging our tails and smelling each other’s butts.

So, dogs can show us how to live in the moment and be kind to the people around us, but my book has three more lessons that dogs can help us with. Lesson one, for example, suggests that we slow down our busy lives. As any dog owner knows, when you are walking your dog, you can’t help but “slow down and smell the… fire hydrant”. If you are in a hurry, walking a dog can be an agonizing process.

Dogs can also help us disconnect from the distractions of our online, web-connected world. It is challenging to read the text on your smart phone with your dog dragging you around.

And finally, dogs help us appreciate nature. After all, what could be more natural than slipping your hand inside a plastic bag and reaching down to pick up a pile of fresh, warm, dog poop. Ah yes—that brings us back to slowing down to smell the… you know what.

The article also noted previous studies that said owning dogs might be linked to “better mental health and feeling less lonely, which are both thought to decrease the risk of heart attacks.”

Walking a dog is, I believe, far better than just walking—and don’t get me started on the walking we do inside a gym on a treadmill with our headphones on. So, grab that leash and take your dog for a walk. It will not only make for one happy dog, it will be good for your heart, good for your mental health, and good for your soul.

Happy dog Day!

Who was G. V. Gress and why was his name on Atlanta’s 1st zoo?

In late November 1889, the City of Atlanta’s first zoo building was being constructed in a brand-new zoological garden in Grant Park. According to news reports, it was “a handsome and substantial structure”, “an ornament to the park”, and provided “comfortable housing for the animals”. The brick structure was more than two hundred feet long with “a continuous railroad track running through the center” and its cages “were constructed of iron”.

Atlanta was joining an exclusive 19th century club—a short list of North American cities that could boast their own zoo. But Atlanta’s case is curious because most of those cities started gradually and, as their animal collections grew, they constructed buildings to house them. Atlanta went from having no zoo to speak of, to needing a “substantial” building to house an entire collection. Where did those animals come from?

A clue might be in the headline of the newspaper article that announced the new building. The new zoo was not called the Grant Park zoo or even the Atlanta Zoo. The new building was being built in the Gress Zoo—named after G. V. Gress.

[image error]George Valentine Gress was a wealthy businessman and well-liked philanthropist. He was described by his contemporaries as “one of the most promising and progressive young men of the new south”. No one seemed to care that Mr. Gress was, in fact, a Yankee.

While still in his early twenties, Gress moved to Atlanta from Pennsylvania in 1870, few years after he served in the Union Army during the Civil War. But Gress was no carpetbagger. He found work at a lumber mill where he worked hard and rose through the ranks until he was able to purchase the company.

According to a newspaper notice in January 1885, Gress announced:

V. Gress, successor to A. B. Steele & Co., manufacturer of yellow pine lumber—having purchased entire interest of Mr. A. B. Steele in above firm, I will continue to serve our old patrons and friends who favor me with orders.

According to one report Gress was “a gentleman of whom any city might be proud. He is a young man, energetic, reliable, and respected”.

“Seven years ago,” the article goes on to state, “he was a poor boy working for three dollars a day. Now he is independently wealthy. That wealth was accumulated by industry and frugality and while it was being accumulated, he made a reputation for honesty and integrity, which are today the most prominent features of his character”.

As president of Gress Lumber Company, he controlled miles of railroad tracks along with locomotives and cars, several lumber mills, and thousands of acres of timber land all over Georgia. His personal real estate holdings in the Atlanta area were reportedly worth tens of thousands of dollars.

But why was the City of Atlanta’s zoo in Grant Park named after this wealthy lumber baron from the North? Was he a philanthropist who donated a pile of money for a zoo?

Well, yes and no—but that’s a story for another day.

Zoo Atlanta – A History Rediscovered

[image error]On a recent visit to Zoo Atlanta I recalled my first visit exactly 49 years ago. The famous gorilla Willie B had arrived at the zoo 9 years earlier. It was that visit that hooked me into the zoo business.

As I toured the zoo, I came across the old Reptile House. It is now vacant, replaced by a new home for reptiles and amphibians—something called Scaly Slimy Spectacular. When I visited in the spring of [image error]1970, the old building was a brand new, state-of-the-art Reptile House that had opened a few years earlier. It featured relief sculptures at the front door. They are by well-known architect and sculptor Julian Hoke Harris and, though the building is closed, they are still visible. The new building is spectacular, but I wish they had incorporated these historic pieces of art along with the slick, back-lit photos.

I also stopped into the gift shop and asked if they had a book that documents the history of the zoo. They did not. So, I did a little online research and discovered from the zoo’s own website:

In March 1889, a traveling show bound for Marietta, Ga., stalled just south of its destination when cash flow problems forced its owner into bankruptcy. Left behind by defecting circus employees, the animals began to draw crowds of curious onlookers. Two weeks later, businessman George Valentine Gress purchased the collection at public auction and donated the animals to the city of Atlanta. City leaders relocated them to picturesque Grant Park, a favorite local picnic and promenade destination. Featuring a jaguar, a hyena, a black bear, a raccoon, an elk, a gazelle, a Mexican hog, lionesses, pumas, camels and snakes, Atlanta’s first zoological venue opened to the public that April. The following year, on August 10th, 1890, the Zoo’s first elephant, arrived. Clio was purchased was purchased through donations by the children of Atlanta.

Who was George Valentine Gress and why did he purchase a zoo? I might need to dig-in to this. There is an interesting story here!

 

Kids and Guns, A link to the natural world

[image error]Guns are all over the news these days—and not in a good way. So, it may come as a surprise for folks in some parts of the country to learn that the State of Georgia is putting guns in the hands of kids. The Georgia Department of Natural Resources has a Hunt & Learn program that provides an educational experience for those with little of no hunting experience. This includes youth between the ages of 12 and 17. The program teaches about hunting & conservation, hunting tactics, how to identify the various game species, and hunter safety.

According to the DNR website, the mission of the Hunt & Learn Program is to provide a conservation-based learning experience for new hunters that places emphasis on the future development of safe and ethical hunting skills.

Shotguns as tools

[image error]As the driver of a mule wagon at a quail hunting plantation, I have an uncommon appreciation for people who apply safe and ethical hunting skills—especially when it comes to the use of firearms. Most people I hunt with use shotguns. Their guns rest in a wagon box for the hunters who ride with me and in saddle scabbards for the horseback riders. I don’t handle the guns, so they are a bit of a mystery, but when you are around them as much as I am, you can’t help but draw some conclusions.

I have concluded, for example, that shotguns aren’t really guns—not like we-need-to-get-guns-off-the-street guns. They are tools. They are works of art. They can be family heirlooms, passed down from generation to generation. To the serious hunter, a shotgun is more than just a gun.

In addition to the guns, I’ve also come to appreciate the art of shooting—especially with the break-down double-barreled gun. Two shots, that’s all you get. Shoot, break, eject, reload, and shoot. It’s like an exquisitely choreographed dance. I’ve seen it a thousand times, and it never gets old. I love the thrill of a double (when a person hits a bird with each of his two shots). Even more special is when someone hits two birds with one shot—probably just luck, but fun to watch, none-the-less.

[image error]As I note in my book, the guests I meet on my wagon are, for the most part, enthusiastic sportsmen. They love shooting the way some people love golf, even to the point of cheering the well-placed shot. Most of them are more like me than I ever suspected. They are naturalists at heart. They may fly-in on private jets and carry shotguns that cost more than a new car, but they still marvel at the vultures that soar overhead, ask about the prescribed fire that maintains quail habitat, and get excited when a cooper’s hawk swoops in to steal one of their birds.

They are as knowledgeable about what quail eat as they are what size shotgun shell will bring them down and they believe in giving the birds a sporting chance to get away. Most will not shoot unless their target is well into the air and flapping madly in the opposite direction.

Hunters and Nature

That sportsmanship is, I believe, what we want to instill in our youth. Most states recognize this and offer hunter safety courses to their young people. Tennessee’s program even shows up in their “one-stop shop for Tennessee families to raise healthy and happy kids”, a program called KidCentral TN. For young hunters and their families, according to KidCentral TN, hunting is a great activity that can be shared. Youngsters learn to be patient, and while waiting for animals they get to see nature up close and personal. Kids are the future of wildlife management and if they experience the hunt, they can understand why it is important to protect those natural places and the animals that live there.

That is why programs like Hunt & Learn and youth hunts are important, not just to the future of hunting, but to a general appreciation for firearms as useful tools in our society. In some ways, if you think about it, guns are as natural as… well, nature.

An Atlanta Zoo Goes to Court

After the arrival of its first elephant, the Gress Zoo continued to prosper. By July 1893, Captain Gress, as he was called, was planning to enlarge the zoo after returning from a trip to visit zoos in Cincinnati, Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia. “The zoo is a hobby with him,” according to reports. “His heart is set on making the Gress zoo one of the finest in the country.” According to his obituary, he did just that. When he died on August 28th, 1934. The Atlanta Constitution reported that:

Few men have contributed more to the happiness of Atlanta children than George V. Gress, whose death occurred Tuesday in Jacksonville where he had lived for the past 20 years. For nearly a half century, thousands of children annually have gained both pleasure and instruction in wildlife in visits to the zoo at Grant park.

I wonder if he knew, as he lay dying, that another zoo in Atlanta was in the news. On Friday, July 21st, 1934, just one month before Gress died, jurors from a City of Decatur courtroom visited the Briarcliff Zoological Garden. They were considering a lawsuit brought by a neighbor of the zoo. She was seeking $25,000 in damages because, according to news reports, “her property has decreased in value because of the nearness of the zoo”. This was not the first time the Briarcliff zoo and its wealthy owner had been in the news—nor would it be the last.

The Briarcliff zoo was part of the 42-acre estate of Asa Candler, Jr., the fabulously wealthy son of one of the founders of the Coca Cola company. Candler dabbled in real estate, but he was primarily known as an eccentric socialite with a big, boisterous personality. The zoo, located on his property at the intersection of Briarcliff Road and University Drive in the Druid Hills neighborhood, was no small affair. It was designed by the same architect who designed Candler’s mansion and gardens. By March 1932, his zoo was already an attraction in the neighborhood with its monkeys, bears, elk, and buffalo, and Candler was in the process of purchasing elephants, lions, chimpanzees, camels, baboons, leopards, and more.

But five months later, trouble was brewing. As Candler planned to host a charity circus on his property, neighbors were reportedly “preparing to seek relief from the presence of the zoo” claiming that the odors and the noises constituted a nuisance. They were hiring legal counsel and planned to ask Candler to “remove the zoo to some location where it will not annoy the neighbors”. If he refused, they would take him to court. It took them two years, but in July 1934 a City of Decatur jury was finally touring the property.

By early 1934, Candler was, in fact, facing multiple lawsuits for his various dealings and in February of that year, a court ruling allowed the DeKalb County tax collector to levy a $100 per day “amusement tax” on the Briarcliff Zoological Garden. Two days before Christmas 1934, an Associated Press article in the Atlanta Constitution foretold the troubles that lay ahead for Asa Candler, Jr. and his beloved zoo. The expense of keeping five elephants, thirty monkeys, eleven lions, and dozens of other animals was becoming a drain on Candler’s considerable resources. The news headline read: Front Yard Zoo of Asa Candler is Running a Husky Winter Deficit.

One month later, in January 1935, Candler said he would sell his zoo to anyone who would pay his $20,000 asking price. The New York city parks department offered half that for his collection of 160 animals, which were said to be valued at closer to $50,000.

Candler was soon prepared to donate his entire collection to the city of Atlanta under one condition—that “proper housing for the valuable animals and rare birds be provided”. The cost of that housing would be considerable—originally reported to be in the range of $15,000 but rising to $50,000—especially for the animals that were “somewhat delicate in Atlanta’s climate”. The city refused to bear the cost, insisting that the money be raised from voluntary contributions by the public. A fundraising campaign was launched and by March 1st, about $30,000 had been raised. By early April, though the fundraising was still far short of its goal at $41,876.50, all of Candler’s animals had already been moved to Grant park.

According to the Zoo’s website, the park swelled with the arrival of the entire Briarcliff Road collection, which included elephants, leopards, water buffalo, elk, zebra, birds, a hyena and a sea lion, not to mention Jimmie Walker, Grant Park’s first tiger.

By May 1935, just three years after it began, the Briarcliff Zoological Garden had disappeared. According to news reports, Candler announced that “the steel and concrete building which formerly housed the zoo” was going to be turned into an indoor swimming pool for public use during the winter months.

The two remarkable men who were responsible for the founding and early development of Zoo Atlanta could have not been more different. George V. Gress was a hard-working and industrious young man who managed to rise through the ranks to become independently wealthy. Asa Candler, Jr. inherited his wealth. Gress had a reputation for honesty and integrity while Candler was described as boisterous and eccentric. But both men had a respect for and fascination with animals, and an appreciation for how important those animals were for the enrichment of their community. Gress bought a circus and donated the animals to the city. Candler once hosted a charity circus at his zoo and donated the proceeds to the Scottish Rite hospital. Candler also ended up donating his entire collection of animals to the city.

Both the Gress zoo and Candler’s Briarcliff zoo have been consigned to the history books and are long forgotten, but the legacy of both men lives on in one of America’s great zoos—Zoo Atlanta.

Atlanta’s Elephant Parade

[image error]Zoo Atlanta’s first elephant walked into Grant park by way of Milledge Avenue on an August afternoon in 1890. She was at the head of a two-mile long parade the likes of which the city had never seen. “Queen Clio,” according to the Atlanta Constitution, “was very tired after the long weary march through the dust and dearth of the long six-mile route.” Her walk was the culmination of an epic journey that had begun a month earlier in Hamburg, Germany.

Soon after George V. Gress donated a zoo full of animals to the city in 1889, Atlanta began its search for an elephant to complement its new animal collection. By early 1890, the newspaper had established an Elephant Fund to encourage donations, a New York broker was hired, and several elephants were discussed. A twelve-year-old female Asian elephant was finally located in Germany and was purchased in July by the Atlanta Constitution newspaper.

According to reports, “her keeper, Otto, first made her acquaintance in 1880, when she was very small.” She had traveled extensively with various circuses but was enjoying a year of rest in the zoological garden at Hamburg.

After her purchase, she was loaded onto a ship that delivered her to the port of Philadelphia on July 31st, 1890. A lengthy article in the Atlanta Constitution announced her arrival. “Atlanta’s elephant is on Pennsylvania soil and tomorrow morning begins her journey Atlanta-ward.” The superintendent of New York’s Central Park Zoo supervised her unloading and the only glitch occurred when “the great lifting machinery of the steamer was taxed in getting the elephant out of the hold. Once there was an ominous slip in one of the pulley fastenings, but it meant nothing, and the animal was safely landed at last.”

She traveled from the docks of Philadelphia to the city of Atlanta by rail in a special car that had been built “for the purpose of transporting the precious animal, modeled after the elephant cars of Forepaugh’s circus train”.

Five days later, the train pulled into Atlanta’s Piedmont park and her car was switched to a siding. It was a short walk to her temporary enclosure, where “the great beast will enjoy a week’s rest after her long voyage”. According to reports, she was “a fine animal, well broke, standing on its head, hind feet, running races, and also carrying a howdah for riding children.”

On Sunday, August 10 the headline said, “The Elephant Gives a Show”.

Five days rest have made the elephant and her keeper themselves again. When they arrived last Tuesday morning, after a trip of nearly four weeks, both were fagged out and not in a humor to see company. But a good oiling of the elephant’s skin, with a hundred pounds or so of hay every day, an apple or bon bon now and then, and plenty of water, have put her in a comfortable condition of mind and body.

“Keeper Havens of the Gress Zoo,” the report continued, “has already prepared a place for her in the North end of the Grant park menagerie.” The newspaper had sponsored a naming contest and announced that “Nemo will be christened with her new name Clio, next Tuesday night”.

The elaborate transfer to her permanent home at Grant park was planned for Thursday, August 14th. The day would begin with an elephant show from 9 a.m. until 2 p.m. (what she did for five hours, I can’t imagine). A parade would commence at 2 p.m. and arrive at Grant park around 4 p.m. That evening, one-hundred invited guests would attend the Gress banquet hosted by Mr. G. V. Gress, president of the park commission “to celebrate the formal establishment of the zoological garden as one of the institutions of Atlanta”.

The parade began with the elephant walking from Piedmont park to Peachtree Street where the rest of the procession fell-in behind her. It was estimated that the military marching units and two miles of floats would take “two hours to move from Piedmont park to Grant park. This will make it nearly an hour passing any given point.” After walking through downtown Atlanta, the elephant turned left on Mitchell Street and marched past Georgia’s new State capitol building before turning down Hill Street and Milledge Avenue into Grant park.

At the zoo, “a space in the big [zoo] building has been allotted [for the elephant], near the main entrance. It has been neatly floored, and windows on either side admit light and air. The floor is made of stout planks, and a huge post has been driven into the ground, to which she will be fastened.”

Though it is sad to think about the conditions in which zoo animals were kept, this is just a look back. It is not a remembrance of “the good old days”. It is meant to help us realize how far we have come in the last 129 years and how much thought and effort we will expend to ensure that our zoo animals have a humane and “happy” place to live. According to the zoo’s website,

The new elephant environment [scheduled to open August 8th] more than triples the size of the elephants’ former habitat and will be a dynamic living space featuring elements specifically designed for elephant well-being and enrichment. The state-of-the-art indoor Zambezi Elephant Center also features elements incorporated with elephant well-being in mind, including sand under their feet. The guest experience at the Zambezi Elephant Center will offer visitors and opportunity to get a behind-the-scenes look at the elephants’ care.

But there is one small nod to the zoo’s past in the new African Savanna. When Clio entered the zoo in 1890, she would have passed Lake Abana, a six-acre, linear lake that occupied the southwest corner of the park—roughly where the zoo parking lot is today. It was a popular feature with a large boat house for the rental of boats and canoes. Lake Abana was drained in the 1960s for zoo expansion. The new elephant exhibit will feature a pond with 360-degree access for ease of use by the elephants. It is the largest of the complex’s three water features. It is called Abana Pond.

An Orderly and Quiet Crowd

“Wasn’t there a crowd at Grants’ Park yesterday?”, began the article in the Monday morning Atlanta newspaper.

[image error]It should come as no surprise that the first Sunday in April would attract a nice crowd to Grant Park, but no one alive has seen a crowd quite like this one. This was the zoo’s first special event—a grand opening that occurred 130 years ago, on April 7th, 1889. There was no circling the lot looking for a parking space because there were no cars. The visitors were “all dressed in their best”, not in today’s uniform of shorts, flip-flops, and baseball caps. And the zoo they had come to see—well, it wasn’t much of a zoo, at least not yet.

“The menagerie,” according to the article, “was arranged in a row around the sides of a large shelter, built as a temporary habitat for the animals of the zoo, and was visited and revisited by thousands of people”.

A great deal of amusement was to be gotten out of the cage of monkeys who were fed with apples, candy, and peanuts until they couldn’t hold another bit. These comical little fellows seemed to know that a great deal was expected from them on this, their first day at Grants’ park, and jumped and frisked round as they had never done since their captivity. A good many people also gathered around the cages of the lion and lioness, and some were venturesome and poked sticks at them when the keeper’s head was turned, while some were afraid and would not go nearer than ten feet. Altogether the zoo feature of the park was a huge success and attracted thousands of people who would not otherwise have gone out to the park at all.

Most people arrived on something called “the dummy line”. This was a single-track streetcar route with a couple of open passenger cars and a tiny steam engine called a “dummy”—so named because it had the appearance of one of the coaches and was thought to be less frightening to horses.

The crowd was noted as being, “white and black, rich and poor, young and old, men, women and children, all bent on having a good time”. People began arriving shortly after 10:00 o’clock

It was estimated that fully 12,000 people visited the park yesterday, and there is good reason to believe that the estimate is about correct. The crowd which had been constantly touring all day long commenced to leave about 5 O’clock, and from that time on until late at night the rush to get seats was something tremendous. Fully 300 people stood waiting for each train to arrive, and when it did come, they rammed and jammed and crashed, all trying to get on two cars that were not built to hold more than 50 passengers each, but somehow the majority managed to get on and the rest had to satisfy themselves as best they could until the next train, when some of them were more fortunate. And it is to the credit of the citizens of Atlanta and the park authorities that it can be said of the crowd that is was the most orderly and quiet crowd that was ever congregated in one place before. Not a drunk, not a disorderly character, nothing to mar the thorough enjoyment of the beautiful spring day that heralded the first appearance of the Gress Zoo at Grant Park.

[image error]And with the recently announced opening of Zoo Atlanta’s African Savanna on August 8th, I hope we can still depend on those opening day crowds to be a credit to the citizens of Atlanta. Let’s hope for an orderly and quiet crowd with no drunk or disorderly characters. Wouldn’t it be nice to see the headline in the next morning’s AJC read, “Wasn’t there a crowd at Grants’ Park yesterday?”.

 

A Circus at Auction

[image error]If you want to understand the impact of financial difficulties on the early circus, I highly recommend Sara Gruen’s best-selling, 2006 novel Water for Elephants. Though a work of fiction, the book helped me imagine the personal cost to the employees for a circus on hard times. What recourse did performers and workers have against cash-strapped owners? Since the circus was constantly on the road and it provided them with food and housing, workers were at the mercy of their employers. They might pay valuable performers while expendable workers were paid little or nothing—until, eventually, everybody left the paymasters wagon empty handed.

That, it appears, is what happened to The Hall and Bingley Circus in March 1889 when it passed through Atlanta. The owners were bankrupt and could not pay their employees. According to newspaper reports, the circus was stopped by an attachment—this followed by many others of a like manner [primarily for wages that were past-due to employees] leads to the appointment of a Receiver. A few days later, on Saturday, March 23rd, the stranded Hall & Bingley Circus is quartered at Jones & Rosser’s stables on hunter Street. Mr. J. L. Lester has been appointed as Receiver.

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The Receivers placed multiple prominent notices in the Atlanta Constitution announcing that the circus was to be sold at auction and, by all accounts, the auction was a success. Businessmen Thomas James and George Gress purchased the circus, with Gress taking the animals and James everything else. Gress was hailed for his generosity when he presented the menagerie animals to the City of Atlanta as the nucleus of a zoological garden.

The Gress collection was modest—no elephants, giraffes, or zebras—but it was enough to start a zoo. The menagerie consisted of a hyena, a jaguar, a black bear, several lions, and two cages of monkeys. Assorted other animals included two wild cats, a gazelle, and a trained Mexican hog. After Gress reportedly sold all the horses he had purchased to local interests and two camels to the agent of a show in Tennessee, he was out-of-pocket $1,350 (a value of over $37,000 in 2019) for cages and zoo animals.

Grant Park seemed a logical choice for the new zoo since it had been home to a small animal collection for several years. In addition to purchasing the animals, Gress donated lumber for buildings, pledged funding for the upkeep of the collection, and opposed an admission fee to “his” zoo.

Starting a zoo must have seemed pretty simple to Gress when he declared that the circus animals are already in cages and all the authorities will have to do will be to build a light structure into which the cages may be rolled to protect them from the weather and from interference. Unlike today, when we would spend months preparing for a grand opening, the Gress Zoo would open to the public in less than two weeks. And what an opening it would be!

Could a long-ago circus accident in Griffin, Georgia be connected to the founding of Zoo Atlanta?

[image error]For the tightrope walker, it was nearly a tragedy. While performing his act for Hall’s Circus on Friday, March 15th, 1889, his rope came loose. Maybe I’ve read too many mysteries—watched too many movies—but this story stirs my imagination. I could understand if he lost his balance or a sudden gust of wind came up, but not “his rope came loose”. How did that happen? Making sure your rope is securely fastened would have been covered in rope-walking 101.

Did the rope-rigger not tie the knot tight enough? Did the performer himself forget to check it? Was he impaired by drink, or was it sabotage? Perhaps a jealous lover tried to do him in. According to the brief story in the newspaper, he fell “headforemost through the top of the canvas” and “escaped with only a few light bruises”.

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To make matters worse, the accident may have been the final performance of the Hall & Bingley Circus. It occurred in Griffin Georgia, about forty miles south of Atlanta. Four days later, on Tuesday, March 19th, the Hall and Bingley Circus was stranded in Atlanta—bankrupt.

I wonder if the accident and the bankruptcy were related—a symptom, perhaps, of mismanagement. Or was it a reflection of the quality of the circus? Whatever the explanation, Hall & Bingley’s misfortune was about to turn into a permanent attraction for the City of Atlanta.