Robert Moses had the Central Park Zoo built for Al Smith--the former governor, and president of the Empire State Building--who lived near the park on the Upper East Side. Moses gave Smith a night key, and the elderly former king of Irish New York would go down to the Central Park Zoo by himself to talk to the animals. Smith loved to spend hours in the zoo after hours, "and he would switch on the lights as he entered each one, to the surprise of its occupants, and talk softly to them...And if one of the zoo’s less dangerous animals was sick or injured, Smith would enter its cage and stand for a while stroking its head and commiserating with it.” [Caro, 382]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses