Frederick Roth Sites

The Central Park Zoo was built over the course of eight months in 1934 by workers employed by the Civil Works Administration and, after that program’s demise, by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. It succeeded the old Central Park Menagerie, a once popular attraction that by the early 1930s was so severely dilapidated that Parks Department officials feared its lions and tigers would break out of the rotted wood structures that housed them. Newly-appointed Parks Commissioner Robert Moses set about replacing the menagerie, not with a full-sized zoo, but with what he called a “picture-book zoo”—a smaller-scale facility meant as...

Frederick Roths's Mother Goose Statue at the entrance to Rumsey Playground in Central Park. The 1938 Parks Department press release announced the erection of the statue: "The Department of Parks announces that an interesting statue depicting famed characters of the Mother Goose series of fairy tales, has been erected in the circle at the entrance to the Mary Harriman Rumsey children's playground in Central Park, Manhattan, formerly the site of the old Casino. The statue consists of a large figure of the witch who is astride the goose's back; then on the east and west sides in bas-relief there are figures of...