Located in the historic West Riverside area of New Orleans, the Audubon Nature Institute, known as the Audubon Zoo, has a long history starting with sugar cane and continuing today with 58 acres of exhibits and events.
The land which is now home to the Audubon Zoo was the first commercial sugar cane plantation in the United States. During the Civil War, the property became by turns a Confederate military installation and a Union hospital. In 1884 a park was created on the land, landscaped by John Charles Olmstead, the landscape architect of New York City's Central Park.
The state of Louisiana established the Audubon Commission in 1914, and its bird flight cage at the park proved to be so popular that a full zoo was created. The Great Depression meant the end of private donations, so the federal government kept the zoo running until 1938, when Valentine Merz donated $50,000 and the facility became the Merz Memorial Zoo.
In the 1950s, the zoo's name was changed to The Audubon Zoo to honor naturalist John James Audubon. By the early 1970s, the zoo fell into decline and conditions were so bad that the U.S. Humane Society called for it to "clean up or close." Through a remarkable private/public collaboration, the zoo was rehabilitated and restored. Among the first American zoos to re-create the natural, wild habitats of animals, it is now one of the top-rated zoological parks in the nation.
