Founded in 1873 and opened in 1875, the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden is the second-oldest zoo in the United States and grew from a local effort to address a caterpillar outbreak by importing insect-eating birds. Shaped early by Cincinnati’s German immigrant community, it developed notable architecture, including some of the nation’s earliest completed zoological exhibits and the country’s oldest surviving zoo building, the Reptile House. After decades of financial instability, it became a more secure public institution in 1932. The zoo is also important for conservation, rare animal history, botanical collections, and pioneering breeding and wildlife research.