Victorian Greenhouse, Connecticut's Beardsley Zoo

Beardsley Park began with a gift of more than 100 acres to the city of Bridgeport in 1878 by James W. Beardsley, on condition that it remain a public park. The city commissioned Frederick Law Olmsted in 1881 and he delivered his plan in 1884. In 1920 the parks commissioner started the process of creating a zoo, officially established in 1922; according to the Bridgeport library, the city invested 50,000 dollars in a large greenhouse where some animals spent the winter.

The National Register of Historic Places nomination (1998) distinguishes several elements. A small brick building of 1897, older than the zoo, is thought to have served as a potting shed for the park's horticultural work. The south greenhouse was built in 1922, when the zoo was started, but its function was not zoological; the nomination adds that the zoo's first greenhouse served the whole park, not just the zoo. The north range, of 1968, replicates the appearance of the 1922 one. The Connecticut Olmsted landscape inventory form notes that the oldest building in the zoo is the greenhouse, which predates the zoo's founding. A 1998 Newtown Bee article, for its part, gives 1878 as the year of construction, calls it the zoo's oldest structure and the centrepiece of the "Victorian Gardens" in its ten-year plan; the register does not support that date.

Bought from the city in 1997 by the Connecticut Zoological Society, the zoo now calls the complex the Victorian Greenhouse. A century plant flowered there in 2003; in January 2020 two agaves carried flower stalks.

According to the National Register nomination (1998), the complex consists of a small one-storey brick building used as a potting shed, flanked by two long gable-roofed glasshouses whose roofs curve into concrete knee walls. The building, in Queen Anne style, has a slate roof, half-timbered gables and segmental-arched openings. At that time the glass of the greenhouses was painted.

The south range, of 1922, has the typical look of a Lord & Burnham greenhouse, which the nomination says was confirmed by a letter from the New York Botanical Garden dated 1 August 1997, based on the firm's records. Its frame is cypress and steel; by 1998 corrosion had badly affected the metal parts, perhaps beyond repair. The north range, of 1968, is aluminium, then in good condition, and carries an Ickes-Braun Glasshouses nameplate.

The zoo mentions high ceilings and rafters along which it planned to guide the flower stalk of an agave more than 2.7 m tall. In OpenStreetMap the "Beardsley Zoo Historic Greenhouse" covers about 690 m², about 70 m long.

The zoo describes the Victorian Greenhouse as home to hundreds of beautiful, unusual or endangered plants, with a pond of koi that visitors can feed. Agaves are the stars: in January 2020 two so-called century plants, more than 2.7 m (9 ft) and more than 2.1 m (7 ft) tall, carried flower stalks growing about 7.5 cm (3 in) a day. The larger, about 80 years old, had been donated in 1956 by a New Haven pharmacy before it was demolished for the Connecticut Turnpike. The zoo leans towards Agave americana but had not confirmed the subspecies.

Bloom was expected in February or March for the first plant, March or April for the second; the previous one in the greenhouse dated from 2003. Other agaves were still years from flowering. The zoo's plants page lists orchids and cacti without saying which grow in the greenhouse. Volunteers help look after the plants and label them.

The Victorian Greenhouse is included in zoo admission: a September 2024 release invites visitors to stroll among flowering plants and feed the koi. According to the 1998 nomination, the path from the south entrance passed the greenhouses before reaching the carousel; access may have been rearranged since.

The visit combines with the rest of the zoo, which occupies part of Beardsley Park, a park whose plan is attributed to Olmsted and which has been on the National Register since 1999. The zoo also has a carousel, which the Bridgeport library calls rare. Agave flowerings there are infrequent: the previous one dated from 2003.