A syndicated Wide World Photos feature about the Bronx Park Children’s Zoo, opened for its twelfth season in spring 1952. The lead photograph caption — “Peter Jeannopoulos discovers how loud a piglet can squeal” — captured Peter at age 8 as one of the named child visitors to the zoo, his photo running in newspapers across the country.
Where the feature ran
The feature appeared in at least two major regional newspapers in late April and early May 1952:
- Richmond Times-Dispatch (Richmond, Virginia), Sunday April 27, 1952, page 125 — “T-D Youth Corner: Try Its • Skill Games • Pixie Puzzles.” The lead “No Adults Admitted — Except Those With Children” item featured the Bronx Children’s Zoo photograph of Peter.
- Des Moines Tribune (Des Moines, Iowa), Thursday May 1, 1952, page 21 — “The Tribune’s Daily Magazine.” Small “INTIMATE FRIENDS” photo plus the parallel “SWANS PASS TIME OF DAY” feature.
Both newspapers carried the Wide World Photos credit. The syndicated reach of the feature — Iowa and Virginia from a single New York City photo session — is characteristic of mid-century children’s-news syndication: a charming child-and-animal photograph would be wired across the country to fill a Sunday or weekday family-features page.
The Bronx Children’s Zoo in 1952
“The Children’s Zoo in Bronx Park, New York City, opened for its twelfth season recently. Adults can’t be admitted unless they are accompanied by children. It boasts a lively assortment of baby lambs, pigs, rabbits, goats, kittens and other animals. Most of its inhabitants are eligible for residence only while they’re young. The zoo is open weekdays from 10:30 A.M. to 4:45 P.M., and stays open an hour later on Sundays and holidays. Before this season’s opening it was given a fresh coat of paint.”
A second photograph in the same feature captured Glen Brickerod, another child visitor, feeding a kid (baby goat) “with the consent of its mother.” The Bronx Children’s Zoo, founded in the early 1940s, operated on the principle that adults could only enter if accompanied by a child — a deliberate reversal of the usual age-gated public-space conventions. It was open year-round on a daily schedule.
Note on this being the earliest preserved public photograph of Peter
This 1952 syndicated photograph — Peter age 8, in 1952 — is the earliest known publicly-published photograph of him in the family archive that has been surfaced. The image places him solidly in New York City in early 1952, three years before his younger brother John C. Jeannopoulos was born (1955), and seven years before his sister Penny (1960). At the time the photo was taken, the family was living in Washington Heights / the Bronx, where his father Constantine was establishing the New York orthopedic practice he would continue for the next two decades.
