New Yorker Recounts Life on the Urban Farm
Lillian White Milking Cow, Children’s Farm, Bronx Zoo, July 15, 1942, New York City Parks Photo Archive
Recently the New Media division at Parks received a communication from an excited Christine Vega, who had come across a vintage photo from the New York City Parks Photo Archive dated 1942 of her mother, Lillian White, posted earlier this year in the Parks Department’s website history of the city’s zoos. Mrs. White had once lived and worked at the Bronx Zoo’s children’s farm.
I caught up with Ms. Vega, and Mrs. White, to learn more about their story and connection to Parks. Mrs. White, a self-described “city girl,” was born in 1916 in Manhattan, and her family later moved to Queens, where she attended Far Rockaway High School. Though the years may have slowed Ms. White—now 92 years old and living at the Elant assisted living facility in Goshen, New York—she vividly recalls her brief but adventurous stint as co-keeper of the Children’s Farm.
The story begins a few years earlier when she met Aaron White while she was working as a cashier at the New York World’s Fair of 1939-40, held in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. He was originally a farmer from Maine, where he had overseen a 400-acre farm in the town of Newport. At the Fair he worked as a driver for the Greyhound Bus Service. They courted and were wed on March 3, 1941.
After the Fair, the New York Zoological Society planned to launch an educational Children’s Farm on the Pelham Parkway outskirts of the Bronx Zoo. Her husband applied for the head position, and got the job of overseeing pigs, goats, cows, chickens and other barnyard denizens at this Bronx refuge. In addition to conducting farm chores and maintenance, Aaron gave tours for school groups. Mrs. White largely took care of the domestic duties, gathering the eggs which she redistributed, and churning butter from the fresh milk produced by the farm’s cows. She and her husband got to know the animals intimately, witnessing several births, including that of a calf. It was also during this time that her first child, Harry, was born.
Mrs. White recalls this relatively brief period in her life with fondness, and recounted an incident when one of the goats to which she tended climbed the stairs of their apartment on the premises, and chased her mother around the parlor. Her husband was a local celebrity of sorts, appearing on the cover of Cue magazine, and in an accompanying photo essay staged with a professional female model.
A year after the United States entered World War II Aaron was drafted into the army, and served an eight-month stint in the service. The family’s days as urban farmers were over, though the family stayed in the Bronx for many years. Later Mr. White would return to Maine to farm for a period, and the family eventually settled in Briarwood, Queens, not far from Kew Gardens. Mr. White again worked as a bus driver at the second New York World’s Fair of 1964-65 at Flushing Meadows Corona Park, and also as a professional chauffeur. Family legend has it that some of his more notable passengers included Jackie Gleason, Eddie Fisher and Elizabeth Taylor (when they eloped to get married), and the Beatles!
Mrs. White and her family are appreciative of the park history website feature in which her photo appears, and for the memories it has stirred.
For more on the history of the city’s zoos visit: www.nyc.gov/parks Keyword: Zoos in Parks
Written by Jonathan Kuhn, Director, Art & Antiquities
QUOTATION FOR THE DAY
“There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.”
Ansel Adams
(1902 – 1984)