Editor’s Note: This story was published in 2021.
PARK TWP. — Visitors traveling down Lakewood Boulevard today are often coming to see the beach, the sunset, the boats. But for two decades in the early 1900s, they were coming to see the animals.
In those years, the lakefront was home to monkeys, camels, wildcats and even an elephant. The story of the impressive menagerie begins with a coal executive from Chicago named George Getz, who decided to escape the overcrowded city by building a farm.
He settled his attention on a small town tucked along the eastern shoreline of Lake Michigan: Holland.
Searching for ‘barren wasteland’
Getz purchased the land for his farm from a middle-aged woman named Ida Fay, whom he’d met at the Chicago Beach Hotel in the early 1900s. The 70-acre farm included a “modern” mansion and established farmland.
“It’s hard to start the story about Lakewood Farm without acknowledging a mistake,” said Valerie van Heest, a local historian and museum exhibit designer who published a book about Lakewood Farm in 2020.
“The story, as it was told by earlier historians and newspapers, said that Getz bought ‘barren wasteland’ in Holland and built his house and farm. That wasn’t true.”
The stick-style mansion, built in 1903, was similar in architecture to the Macatawa Hotel, likely because it was constructed by the same builder. Fey dealt in squabs, baby pigeons and fruit trees. She ran the farm, which she named Lakewood, for just six years before selling to Getz in 1910.
“Teddy Roosevelt was president around the time Getz started looking for property,” van Heest said. “There was some worry in the country that the population was exceeding the food supply. So, a big back-to-the-land movement began. It encouraged ‘big money’ businessmen to invest in farms.”
By this time, Getz was considered ‘big money’ himself.
“His story was very much rags to riches,” van Heest said. “He started out in rural Pennsylvania in a farm family. He didn’t have two pennies to rub together. He left to make a living in Chicago. He was a very patriotic guy, so it wouldn’t be a stretch for him to follow the suggestion to invest in a farm.
“There were rumors they were looking for barren land to build a home, but they didn’t find it by the time his wife was eight months pregnant with their second son, and this mansion was available. They bought it and moved right in.”
Just over a month after giving birth, Getz’s wife died from delivery complications at 33 years old, leaving Getz a widower with two sons at the age of 47.
The beginnings of a collection
The newly single father didn’t walk away from his farm. Instead, he began to expand it. In less than seven years, the farm grew to more than 250 acres — more than three times its original size.
“He just embraced it,” van Heest said. “He thought it would be a healthy way to raise the boys in the summertime, learning about farms and agriculture.”
And then, the collection of animals began. Why? No one can say for sure. But it seems Getz’s interest in exotic animals began following a mental breakdown in 1900, which encouraged him to take a much-needed vacation to Egypt.
There, Getz was given a monkey as a gift by a houseboy. To family members, he credited this experience with piquing his interest in someday having his own menagerie.
It seemed he was well on his way when he erected a circus tent with chickens, parrots, dogs, ponies, goats, monkeys and canaries at the 1912 South Ottawa and West Allegan Agricultural Association’s County Fair.
The following year, he added two camels to the list. Organizers of the fair noted there had never been so many people in attendance before.
“He had the camels shipped from overseas,” van Heest said. “People in town had never seen camels before. It was the most amazing thing. They decided they’d have to stop and see what was going on at Lakewood Farm.”
Some farmers wouldn’t appreciate curious eyes, but Getz encouraged it.
“He invited them in,” van Heest said. “He continued to acquire animals and he let anyone who wanted to drop by see them.”
In the coming years, Getz collected a baboon, bald eagles, an ocelot, an anteater, odorless skunks, a red fox, an eagle, wildcats, a leopard, a badger, coyotes, a sun bear, donkeys, a variety of monkeys and the world’s smallest stallion — weighing only 127 pounds and standing just over two feet tall, he was named Tiny Mite.
This continued until World War I, when Getz decided to volunteer with the Red Cross. In 1918 and 1919, Getz was stationed in France with other wealthy businessmen who assisted with organization and management.
“Before he left, he gave away some of the animals he collected,” van Heest said. “He gave some to the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago and some to the fledgling John Ball Zoo, which was just getting off the ground. His staff focused on chickens and eggs to help feed the troops.”
By the time Getz returned from the war, his children were teenagers. The grounds were covered in vegetables, fruit trees, plants and lush landscaping. More buildings were constructed to support the farm — and, perhaps most importantly, more enclosures were built.
Getz was collecting again.
Becoming Lakewood Farm and Zoo
In addition to his passion for animals, Getz was heavily involved in the community. He hosted political rallies, civic meetings and celebrations on his farm each summer.
National popularity came in 1926, after a man named Fred Green announced his candidacy for state governor. Getz decided to host a rally for Green at Lakewood Farm, and timed the rally with a special delivery of exotic animals.
“More than 30,000 people showed up,” van Heest said. “They came from quite a distance. It went in all the newspapers. And the writers were calling the farm a zoo — even though, up to this point, it was just a rich guy with an animal collection.”
Like most other things in his life, van Heest said, Getz embraced it.
“He said, ‘If they’re calling it a zoo, we’ll make it a zoo.’ He put up some gates, established regular hours, fixed up the grounds, ordered more animals and went on a safari.”
And thus, Lakewood Farm and Zoo was born. Soon enough, Getz had collected the “big five” animals of Africa — an elephant, a lion, a tiger, a rhino and an African buffalo.
“These were considered the hardest animals to capture,” van Heest said. “And he had them all at Lakewood Farm, seven miles north of town. He had the biggest and the best. John Ball Zoo didn’t have that. Detroit Zoo didn’t even exist back then. It was similar to Lincoln Park Zoo, all the way in Chicago. In little Holland, Michigan, they had the big five.”
And more. Getz acquired a giraffe, polar bears, penguins, pythons, kangaroos, panthers, a jaguar, orangutans and a chimpanzee. By the fall of 1926, more than 800,000 people had passed through the gates to see the farm, the zoo, and the property’s large botanical garden.
From then until its closure, Lakewood Farm saw more than a million visitors each year, and nearly all of them entered for free.
“It was amazing for us to have an attraction in Holland that was a working farm with a botanical garden the likes of Meijer Gardens and a zoo the likes of John Ball Zoo,” van Heest said. “It was everything, and it was all on the shores of Lake Michigan.”
Perhaps Lakewood Farm and Zoo would have continued like this for several decades, until regulations on exotic animal ownership — which didn’t exist then — forced the zoo to adapt or close its doors. But that chance never came.
Instead, the Great Depression hit.
The final years
By the early 1930s, Getz was in his seventies and feeling the strain of the shattered economy. He struggled to keep his staff paid and his animals fed. In 1931, he asked the board of his coal company to reduce his salary as chairman from $25,000 to $5,000. In 1932, he eliminated it altogether.
In an attempt to keep the farm open to the public, Getz offered to sell the property and animals to the state. In 1932, for the first time ever, he charged an admission of a quarter per adult and a dime per child — likely in an attempt to prove the venture made financial sense for the state.
“But of course, it was the Depression,” van Heest said. “The state couldn’t afford it, even though Getz was offering to sell for less than it was worth.”
Regardless of ongoing public interest, Getz was running out of steam. After a violent storm in July 1933, which damaged many of the farm’s buildings and left the animals unharmed, he announced he was closing the zoo portion of the property altogether.
He donated all of his animals, which then totaled more than 300, to the newly constructed Brookfield Zoo in Chicago. In November 1933, with permission from three state governors, a caravan of exotic animals left Holland and headed to Illinois.
On February 11, 1938, Getz died in Florida. The era of Lakewood Farm was over.
Restoration and recognition
In the years preceding his death, Getz and his sons attempted to sell the farm, which included lakefront guest cottages, greenhouses, an 18-hole putting golf course and the nine-bedroom, eight-bathroom mansion. But buyers were scarce.
“He was trying to market the farm as a country estate,” van Heest said. “He wanted somebody to come and buy all 250 acres. But after he died, his sons decided they couldn’t sit on it anymore. They involved a developer, and it was broken into 175 pieces.”
In 1945, the mansion and its 4.23 acres were purchased by car dealer William Vandenberg and his wife, Esther. After the couple divorced, Esther remained in the home until her death in 2003.
The property held a number of structures Getz built, including a three-car garage, the former employee dormitory, a beach pavilion, the greenhouse, two iconic fountains, the golf course and a storage barn. The home included all of Getz’s furniture, and some that once belonged to Ida Fay.
Esther’s children listed the home shortly after her death, but refused to sell to anyone that intended to knock it down. In 2004, the property was purchased by current owners Ken and Patti Bing. In 2010, the couple began a major restoration to the mansion and landscaping.
A decade later, the property was nominated and listed to the National Register of Historic Places. The register, formed by the U.S. National Park Service, is an official list of the nation’s historic places worthy of preservation.
“With the exception of Lakewood Farm, there has never been, nor is there today in America, a public attraction that is combination working farm, horticultural garden and zoo, set on the shores of a major body (of water) and with an on-site owner’s mansion,” van Heest wrote in her nomination.
Other structures from Lakewood Farm and Zoo remain standing today, including four original lakefront guest cottages, four inland cottages, the iconic stone entry columns and the farm’s water tower — which is visible from Lakeshore Avenue.
Though the remaining home and surrounding property is private, more information on Lakewood Farm and Zoo can be found in the Pump House Museum at 2282 Ottawa Beach Road. Van Heest’s book is available at Reader’s World in downtown Holland.
— Information and media for this article was compiled, in part, by Valerie van Heest, the Historic Ottawa Beach Society and MIGenWeb of the USGenWeb Project. Contact local editor Cassandra Lybrink at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on The Holland Sentinel: Holland’s lakeshore was once home to a world-class menagerie
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