Sunday Favorites: How Lowry Park Became Zoo Tampa

The kids also enjoyed the African section before they were ready to call it a day. We got a good look at the giraffes, apes and rhinoceros. The highlight was seeing a baby elephant frolic around with its mother. It got me thinking a little about the parks history. When I visited Lowry Park as a young child, you could actually ride an elephant; the zoo has changed a lot since then.

Lowry Park opened in 1925 and was named for city commissioner Sumter de Leon Lowry Sr.

During the early 1930s Tampa’s first collection of zoo animals existed downtown in Plant Park, which was on the grounds of Tampa University. It consisted of several indigenous animals including raccoons, alligators and an array of birds. As the collection grew, Tampa officials began searching for a bigger location, according to an archival history once located on the zoo’s website.

During the 1950s, Lowry’s son, Sumter de Leon Lowry Jr., contributed money for significant improvements to the park. In collaboration with Mayor Nick Nuccio, the animals from Plant Park were moved to Lowry Park and incorporated into an interactive ”Fairyland“ theme.

The park reopened as Lowry Park Zoo in 1957, integrating concrete statures depicting fairytales and nursery-rhymes with live animals from the zoo. For instance, a stature of Little Bow Peep guarded a flock of real-life sheep according to a historic flyer.

Families walked over a rainbow staircase to enter the park. Then, they could ride a child-sized train throughout the park and see the animals. An excerpt from an old flyer best describes what the park was like back then.

"Fairyland was drawn from the dreams and hopes of childhood. Peter Pan lived again, as life-sized pixies drifted through trees over a landscaped path winding through the 15 acres of the park. Live mice helped complete the restoration of the familiar "Hickory Dickory Dock." One could see the Old Lady living in a shoe that was 20 feet high. Humpty Dumpty was perched on the castle wall and all the King's men were standing by as he teetered on the edge. Across the lane was the home of the Little Red Hen and nearby, the Three Men in a Tub--the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker--floating in a sea filled with goldfish.“

Soon after it opened, Lowry Jr. donated the park’s biggest attraction – an 18-month-old Asian elephant named Sheena. Sheena regularly greeted guests as they entered over the rainbow. Lowry’s donation ultimately became the motivation for expanding the collection of animals from indigenous to more exotic creatures.

By the 1980s, when I first started visiting the park, Fantasyland had fallen into a state of disrepair. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed seeing the remaining concrete statues like the old lady living in the shoe and Humpty Dumpty. The rainbow bridge was no longer there but you could ride an elephant, I’m assuming a grown up Sheena, which was the highlight of the visit. It was around this time that the Humane Society dubbed the attraction ”One of the Worst Zoos in America,“ according to a 2004 St. Petersburg Times article called ”Tampa Zoo Tops for Children.“

The classification was a wake-up call for the city, which had been maintaining the park. The Lowry Park Zoo Association was formed in 1982, at the suggestion of the Tampa Parks Department, Mayor Bob Martinez, and a group of private citizens. It embarked on a $20 million capital campaign project. With the use of public-private partnerships to fund the renovation, the renovation was implement in three phases. The City of Tampa committed $8 million to build the first phase.

The rejuvenated Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo formally opened to the public on March 5, 1988, with more than 614,000 people visiting the facility during its first 12 months. Since then, the zoo has made significant improvements and expansions. The most recent being in 2018 when the zoo rebranded as ZooTampa at Lowry Park to emphasize its connections to Tampa and the region along with its progress. Over the next 10 years, Couceiro wants to continue to expand and redesign several zoo features

Though the park looks nothing like it did when I was a kid, it still serves the same purpose – to entertain and engage children. The purpose has expanded to educate children and rehabilitate animals. Most animals living in the zoo were injured in the wild and are unable to live alone in their native habitat.

No, you can no longer ride an elephant, but feeding a giraffe is just as cool and a lot more humane for the animal. I am excited to see how the zoo changes and sustains itself in the future.