Page 40 - Gateways_Spring2021

7 Edith had no idea
2 3
40 GATEWAYS | MCCORMICK
the zoo would become
such a success.
Following her 1919 gift, the project stalled after a failed Andrea Friederici Ross is the
1923 tax referendum and did not gain traction until author of Let the Lions Roar!
The Evolution of Brookfield Zoo.
4 9 Her new book Edith: The Rogue
a successful vote by Cook County taxpayers in 1926.
Even then, early construction was hampered by the
Rockefeller McCormick is available
slowing economy and then came to a standstill during
the Great Depression. When Edith died—broke and at siupress.com/Edith or at your
largely estranged from her family—the zoo was still favorite bookseller. Ross lives
far from completion. in the western suburbs, where
Like Vincent van Gogh, Henry David Thoreau, she works in a grade school
Edgar Allan Poe, and others who never really experi- library and researches forgotten
enced success in their lifetimes, Edith Rockefeller women of Chicago history.
McCormick had no way of knowing that her 1919
gift of land would ultimately transform into a place
of joy for so many. Perhaps her contemporary, Jane
Addams, said it best when she prophesized the new
zoo would generate “many processions of happy
children setting forth…as to a magic land.”