| The Palo Alto History Project |
| The Junior Museum and Zoo 1451 Middlefield Road |
| 2006 |
| The Junior Museum and Zoo: The Modern Child's Hang Out When the Baby Boom Generation was growing up in the 1950s and 60s, life as a kid was pretty simple. Wanted someone to play with? Go outside and play with the neighborhood kids. Want a place to play? Any riverbed, abandoned lot or neighborhood street would do. Want a game to play? An old broomstick and a pink rubber ball was enough equipment for a pretty decent game of stickball. But now that the Baby Boomers have grown up and had children of their own, things seem a bit more complicated for their children. In the 1980s, parenting in America seemed to lose its innocence. Abandoned lots, riverbeds, or streets no longer seemed like safe places to play. Letting kids walk to school or to a friend’s house was now often seen as careless parenting. Children’s after-school activities became ever more closely monitored by parents consumed (at least partly with reason) by the fear of child abductions, sexual predators, or unmonitored injuries. These days, most parents must know where their children are at all times---a byproduct of which is the odd sight of 8 year-olds carrying cell phones. It has also led to a highly structured way of life for children (which some worry has contributed to a loss in their self-sufficiency skills). Children of the 21st Century are now more likely to have “playdates” arranged by mothers with Blackberries than to hang out with whoever is out in the neighborhood. The athletes of tomorrow are now registered (for a fee) in soccer and baseball leagues with uniforms, umpires, and rules for overexertion --- as the old stickball games usually involved too much playing in the street and unsupervised injury potential. In the 1990s, after-school education was added to this roster of child structure. Kids in Palo Alto were often signed up for late afternoon art classes, science classes and other academic pursuits --- giving rise to companies like Score! and Sylvan Learning Center, motivational schools for after-school. The desire for structured activities has also led to a boom in children’s museums across the country. Since the 1990s, Baby Boomer parents have been on the lookout for more structured educational quality time with their children. No longer simply content to let their little ones play in the sandbox, today’s parents believe that education begins at birth. 20 million youngsters now visit children’s museums across the country each year, the majority of which have been built in the last tens years and are targeted towards the education needs of children under five. Palo Alto actually had one of the first children’s museums in the nation --- the Junior Museum founded in 1934. In 1941, it was the first children’s museum west of the Mississippi to construct its own building --- at 1451 Middlefield Road --- where it still resides today. In 1955, the museum began using a science mobile to bring the excitement of nature into area classrooms and in 1969, a small zoo featuring bats, snakes, and small animals was added to the museum. But the museum hit hard times during the recessions of the mid and late 1980s. Money from the Council began to dry up and exhibits and volunteers were showing their age. The museum's two small exhibition halls were a mess, drab paint was peeling off the walls, the ratty carpet was coming apart, and the 1960s-era track lights barely illuminated a few tired-looking dioramas on display. In 1995, under the tutelage of new director Rachel Meyer, a renaissance began. The museum became more savvy in its search for money, tapping private coffers around the city and raising its private budget from $15,000 to more than half a million dollars in ten years. The extra funding was put back into hands-on exhibits for children and a brightening of the interior space. The old florescent grid lighting in the exhibition halls and dated carpeting was replaced with newer, brighter materials. By 2002, the number of annual visitors to the Junior Museum and Zoo had jumped from 50,000 to 150,000. Like many of the children’s museums around the nation, the Junior Museum and Zoo is a far more interactive and dynamic place than the museums that Baby Boomers remember from their youths. Recent changes in the way schools are teaching science to elementary school kids --- emphasizing exploration and fun rather than learning straight from a textbook --- has helped draw interest to children's museums. The exhibits are now also professionally designed and based in modern educational psychology on the ways in which children learn. A good example is the artistically-named “Messages.” The interactive exhibit is about the patterns of life in sound and in nature and the other uses interactive computer programs, sculptures, toys, and other tools to help kids explore how people communicate--for instance, verbally, with body language, and with facial expressions. Pretty intense for a four year old. Similarly, The Junior Museum’s outreach program to kids has have featured classes such as "Zoobots," "Roller Coasters," and "Science Experiments You Can Eat.” The classes are designed to teach sophisticated subjects --- life sciences, basic chemistry, geology, and physics --- in a fun and engaging way. The life of a child in Palo Alto is has certainly changed a great deal in fifty years. Something was surely lost in the societal changes that no longer allow children to explore their neighborhood at their own free will. On the other hand, places like the Junior Museum and Zoo provide a new atmosphere of creative exploration that gives today’s kids environments never dreamed of by children fifty years ago. -Matt Bowling |
| The museum is very popular with young children |
| Inside the museum workshop in 1939 (PAHA) |
| Zookeeper Judy Eaton with a fox in 1982. (PAHA) |
| The museum in the 1950s (PAHA) |
| A scenic pond at the zoo |
| A little girl makes a new friend |
| Two boys check out a snake in the zoo in the 1980s. (PAHA) |
| 2007 |
| circa 1955 |
| The map below shows the Rinconada Park area |
| Rachel Meyer, widely credited for engineering the Museum's comeback. |
| Children check out a cage in the zoo during its leaner days in the 1990s. (PAHA) |
| The odd sight of a water buffalo's head is installed in the museum in 1956. (PAHA) |
| Palo Alto: Then & Now |
| The Junior Museum entrance in the 1950s. Kids park their bikes at an outside bike rack. |
| The Junior Museum has changed more inside than out in the past 50 years, although a few signs of modern day life can be spotted. A pay telephone and a handicapped access ramp have been added. A tree stump stepping course has taken the place of the bike rack, which has been relocated on the premises. |
| Sources: Palo Alto Times, PAHA, Palo Alto Weekly |
| "Snakes and Such" at the Junior Museum "This was the first time I handled a snake and learned to identify the harmless and dangerous snakes. It came in handy later when we came across a baby rattler on a hike at "day camp" that used to be held on the property that later came to be known as "Foothill Park". My brother also took "Snakes and Such", and he loved the old dinosaur tunnel. He's now a paleontologist and dean of science at SJ State." -Bill |
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