Longfellow Gardens at Minnehaha Park, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1909 Postcard Reproduction

Nice historic view of Longfellow Gardens at Minnehaha Park in  Minneapolis, Minnesota, from 1909. The Longfellow Zoological Gardens (sometimes simply called the Longfellow Gardens) were a zoo and garden in Minneapolis's Minnehaha neighborhood in Minnesota. A Minneapolis businessman and showman named Robert "Fish" Jones first bought a property near the edge of downtown Minneapolis in 1886. He converted the 3-acre (12,000 m2) property into a zoo for the animals which he had collected since his arrival in Minneapolis in 1876. These included lions, jaguars, leopards, bears, cattle, and a camel. The number of animals he kept, however, soon grew and Jones was forced to move from the property on Hennepin Avenue to an area in south Minneapolis. Then, in 1906, he opened the zoo to the public. He also built a house styled after the home of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, where he lived for the rest of his life. The zoo was popular and continued to grow as Jones eventually added zebras, monkeys,