Zoo Menagerie

Zoo Menagerie by artist Paul Santoleri is located near the entrance to the Philadelphia Zoo at 34th and Girard Avenues in West Philadelphia. The project includes murals on both sides of the underpass and an adjacent retaining wall on Girard Avenue just west of 34th Street as well as 18 support columns. Glass mosaic panels are installed on the bridge supports facing the zoo entrance. Murals were also added to the bridge railings on the east side of the intersection. Originally painted in 2002, Zoo Menagerie covered an older zoo mural by Robert Bullock and extended the mural to the retaining wall and support columns of the underpass. The entire mural is done in an animal motifs, with part of the mural depicting animals and part reflecting the beautiful patterns of their fur, feathers, scales, etc. In addition to using paint and mosaic, three-dimensional reliefs of animals were added to extend the mural along an adjacent retaining wall. Two small walls on the underpass are also decorated in stained glass mosaic as a gateway to the zoo.

Santoleri describes the restoration work in his artist statement:
I restored the mural to be basically as it was originally painted with a few additions. I asked several of my interns and assistants to contribute to the new design, through patterns, color alterations and designs for surfaces not previously included in the original mural surface, but approved by the zoo for additional imagery. The hippo relief at the west entrance to the underpass was redone and treated with stained glass, and the mouth originally wide open, was closed a bit – enough to be the perfect size to insert one’s head. Subsequently, many people passing the sculpture, on their way into the zoo stop to pose for photographs with their children’s heads in the hippo’s mouth. I love this interaction with a wall piece and it is the reason that I include relief or stained glass in an otherwise flat painted surface.

In addition to the altered hippo, I designed 14 long horizontal panels that were painted by assistants and interns and myself and installed into the inset panels along the face of the Girard Avenue railroad bridge.

The piece is essentially my response to the mysterious animals that live in the community of the Philly zoo that people come to better understand themselves and the other beings with whom we share this world.