The WPA Cat House

Dated 1936 and 1940 in the record — both printed

Lead: The oldest building at the Potawatomi Zoo is a relief-work building. In the Depression years the Works Progress Administration — the federal relief program that put the unemployed to work on public projects across the country, and whose South Bend works appear throughout this record — built the zoo's Cat House, its first permanent structure. The zoo's earlier published history dates the building to 1936 and says of it: "This building still stands today and is known as the WPA building and currently houses one species of leopard." The widely carried account drawn from the Board of Park Commissioners' annual report dates the same building to 1940, "at the end of the Great Depression," and describes it as home to Amur leopards and snow leopards and "the oldest zoo building still standing." A 2017 magazine account of the zoo gives 1936, agreeing with the zoo's own timeline. The two dates are printed here unaveraged: the zoo's own published history says 1936; the account resting on the park commissioners' annual report says 1940. What both accounts agree on is the substance — the WPA built it, it was the zoo's first permanent structure, and it stands today, still doing the work it was built for, holding the zoo's leopards in the building relief labor raised for them the better part of a century ago. When the zoo broke ground in 2025 for Big Cat Tracks, its new home for Amur leopards and tigers, it was building the Cat House's successor a few hundred feet from the original.

Sources:

1. Potawatomi Zoo, earlier published history timeline (the Cat House, 1936, "known as the WPA building").
2. Account of the zoo's history resting on the Annual Report of the Board of South Bend Park Commissioners (the Cat House, 1940; Amur and snow leopards; oldest building standing).
3. "One Tank Trips," The Columbian, August–September 2017 (the Cat House dated 1936).