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The Reptile House at the Bronx Zoo was one of the first buildingsto be constructed in the newly chartered New York ZoologicalPark. Opened to the public in 1898, the Reptile House wasimmediately of immense popularity with the general public. CuratorRaymond L. Ditmars (1899–1942) wrote in the zoologicalsociety’s fifth annual report for 1900: “The Reptile House is permanentlyfixed in the minds of visitors as a center of attraction,”and “All things considered, the alligator pool is perhaps the satisfactorysingle feature in the Reptile House” (anon., 1898, 1900).Fig. 1. shows the original floorplan of the Reptile House as it wasconstructed in 1898, in a spacious, state-of-the-art, modern buildingof the times (Fig. 2). To this day, the exterior of the reptilehouse remains much as it was originally constructed, a sturdy structureof steel and dense, fire-kilned brick. Its roofline and cornicesare festooned with the sculptured cement heads of reptiles andamphibians to mark the presence of its scaly inhabitants. Thesewere especially created by the well known animal sculptor of thetime, Mr. A. P. Proctor. The alligator pools at the west end of thebuilding were designed to be main attractions and meant to houseonly American Alligators (Fig. 3).Ditmars was well aware that a constant warm environment wasessential to the health of crocodilians. He had insisted that heatingpipes carrying warm water, immersed along the perimeter of thealligator pools to maintain pool water temperatures in the range of27–30°C, be included in the construction of the 1898 building.The Most Beautiful Reptile House in the WorldFIG. 2. The Reptile House at the Bronx Zoo as it appeared in 1898.West pools conservatory is to the left.out of curiosity as ferocious potential man-eaters. It was generallyheld, even by the curatorial staff, that as crocodilians inhabitedthe warm tropical and sub-tropical wetlands of the world, theycould be exhibited only at considerable cost in space and utilitiesif they were to be kept alive at all, especially in northern climates.Certainly, they would not reproduce.A House for Reptiles in New York CityThe Reptile House remained largely unaltered until 1954, when,under the curatorship of Dr. James A. Oliver (1951–1958), it underwentits first renovation and modernization. Oliver’s article inAnimal Kingdom was aptly titled, “The most beautiful reptile housein the world” (Oliver 1954). The curved glass-walled conservatorycan still be seen, designed to allow the overhead sunlight tobrighten the alligator pools and their luxuriant plantings at thewest end of the Reptile House (Fig. 4). Oliver’s designs for therenovated reptile house advanced the heated pool concept and includeda state-of-the art heating system for all of the reptile exhibits,with heated concrete slabs for basking crocodilians. An opennursery with an unobstructed view of juvenile crocodilians wasadded to the major exhibits, to exhibit the many public donationsof alligators. Visitors were treated to a frenzy of crocodilian activityas the keeper staff provided regular feeding demonstrationsseveral times a week (Fig. 5). True to the original concept, therenovated Reptile House exhibited only adult American Alligators,Alligator mississippiensis, in the center main pool. However,the east end of the Reptile House now included a spacious crocodileexhibit, patterned after an Egyptian tomb, and a doorwaypainted with pictograms taken from the Book of the Dead, attributedto Sobk, the Egyptian crocodile god, son of Neith (Faulkner1985). The exhibit housed a single 3.7 m long Nile Crocodile,Crocodylus niloticus, named “Joe.” The public would be greetedby a bevy of large alligators in a tropical setting as they enteredthe reptile house and leave with the image of a fearsome maneatingcrocodile. While the 1954 Reptile House included a nursery forrearing baby crocodilians, a main pool designed to exhibit a fewspectacular animals, and two smaller flanking pools for exhibitingspecial species of interest, there was still no provision for breedingcrocodilians, incubating a potentially large number of eggs, orhousing a multi-species collection of crocodilians of various sizesand life stages.The Early Bronx Zoo CollectionFIG. 3. Alligator pools in the conservatory at the west end of the reptilehouse in 1900.The 1900 annual report lists two species of crocodilians in thereptile collection. In September, 1899, Ditmars specifically calledattention to the rapid growth of a 395 cm long alligator (Ditmars1900) (Fig. 6). However, it is unclear how extensive a plan therewas for increasing the diversity of crocodilian species in the BronxZoo collections between 1898 and the first major renovation in1954. In the original zoo plan, there was some limited space for138 Herpetological Review 39(2), 2008