Free as Always: Henry Vilas Zoo, Madison's Century-Old Gift
One of the last free zoos in America, willed to the city in 1911 on the condition it charge nothing, forever. Vilas Zoo's animals, its county future, and its quiet November season.
The condition was written into the gift: when William F. Vilas, the former senator and postmaster general, donated the land for Madison's zoo in 1911 and named it for his son Henry, who had died in childhood, the deed required that admission remain free — 'forever,' in substance — and that the park bear Henry's name. More than a century later, the Henry Vilas Zoo on the near-west side remains exactly that: a real zoo, with lions, giraffes, orangutans and a celebrated polar-bear-and-seal Arctic Passage, that charges no admission at all. It is one of the last free major zoos in America.
The zoo's compact scale is its character: some 28 acres of a larger park on Lake Wingra's shore, walkable in a visit, beloved in the way of institutions that raise a city's children in sequence. Its modern era brought the Arctic Passage and the primate and big-cat buildings; its animal collection balances the charismatic with the conservation mission, and its education programs move through the region's schools. The zoo's trains and carousel, its winter-quiet paths and its summer crush are the rhythm of a neighborhood institution with a metropolitan draw.
Its governance is a current civic story: long operated by Dane County, the zoo's management and funding have been the subject of ongoing city-county-foundation negotiation — the question of how a free zoo finances modern animal care is a live file in both the county board's and the city council's business, and one this desk will follow in the documents. Free admission is a promise; promises have budgets.
November is the zoo's gentle season: the crowds thin, the cold-climate animals — the polar bears, the seals, the Amur tigers — enter the weather they were built for, and the grounds belong to the neighborhood walkers and the school groups in their puffy coats. Henry Vilas's park was given to the children of Madison. In November, the whole city can have it nearly to itself.
Our coverage will treat the zoo as what it is: a civic trust with animals. Board decisions and budgets in the open, animal news with delight, and the deed's simple condition honored in every story: free, as always, forever.
