How American Zoos Changed Their Design, Purpose and View of Animals
This 1981 historical essay traces the development of American zoos, including changes in exhibit design, attitudes toward animals, recreation and education, and places those arguments in later zoo-history and welfare context.
What the study did and found
Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz’s 1981 article “Seeing ourselves through the bars: a historical tour of American zoos” traces how zoos in the United States developed and how their purposes and planning ideas changed over time. The account describes a shift away from more intrusive display practices toward a more protective and respectful attitude to animals, alongside growing recognition that each species’ environment matters to exhibit planning. It also identifies the influence of Carl Hagenbeck’s panoramic approach, which used landscaped settings and concealed barriers to create more naturalistic displays. The article characterises zoos primarily as recreational places and argues that their educational role was often mediated through interpretive or audio-visual material rather than through a direct “live” educational experience.
Why it is cited
The article appears in later zoo-history writing and in university teaching materials. MIT OpenCourseWare assigns Horowitz’s article in a unit on zoos in American Urban History II, while later scholarship on American zoo exhibits includes it among the historical references used to discuss exhibit development. A New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission report on the Bronx Zoo also includes the article among its historical sources. In these contexts, the article serves as historical evidence for understanding zoo development, design and cultural purpose rather than as an experimental animal-welfare study.
Later historical work also treats the Hagenbeck plan as an important reference point in the development of naturalistic zoo design, while current professional guidance gives animal welfare a much stronger evidence-based role. World Association of Zoos and Aquariums guidance also places conservation education, measurable learning outcomes and animal welfare within modern institutional practice. Horowitz’s 1981 discussion of education is therefore best read as a historical snapshot rather than a universal description of zoos today. The article remains useful for historical comparison, but its broader observations should be interpreted alongside later welfare science and conservation-education standards.
The topic today
Zoo planning today still uses naturalistic settings, but contemporary standards place greater weight on measurable animal welfare, conservation, education and research. The World Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ 2025 animal-welfare strategy calls for ongoing welfare evaluation and for animal-visitor interactions that prioritise positive welfare and animal agency. These developments extend the historical trajectory described in 1981: the central question is no longer simply how zoos look to visitors, but how design and programming affect animals, learning and conservation goals.