On December 20, 1936, about 100 visitors each paid 25 cents to walk into Franz and Louise Scherr's Parrot Jungle at Red Road and Southwest 111th Street. The Red Road entrance those visitors used is still there. The amphitheater where the birds performed is still in use, now called the Banyan Bowl and covered by a geodesic dome. Nearly 90 years later, the place that started as a 20-acre tourist stop is Pinecrest Gardens. It is collecting the history of its own beginnings, and much of that history is likely sitting in family photo albums.
The project is called Wings, Scales & Wonder: Pinecrest's Legacy of Living Attractions. It covers more than Parrot Jungle. It also takes in the Miami Serpentarium and the Rare Bird Farm, two more animal attractions that stood a short drive away. Put the three together and the shape is clear: a good share of the land Pinecrest now uses for gathering, governing and gardening was once sold to tourists by the ticket.
Three Attractions, a Few Miles of Map
All three sat along the Red Road and South Dixie Highway corridor, and each left a mark on the village that still shows today.
| Attraction | Starting point | Where it stood | What the site connects to today |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parrot Jungle | Opened December 20, 1936 | Red Road and SW 111th Street | Pinecrest Gardens |
| Miami Rare Bird Farm | Land purchased August 3, 1938 | Southeast corner of Flagler Boulevard/SW 102nd Street and US 1 | Pinecrest's Flagler Grove area |
| Miami Serpentarium | Opened 1947 | Dixie Highway, just north of SW 128th Street | Near today's Village Hall and Municipal Center |
Only one of the three still has buildings and trees you can walk through. That is why the other two depend so heavily on what people bring in.
What Survived at Red Road and SW 111th
Parrot Jungle drew famous visitors for decades. A 1997 Sun-Sentinel feature named Winston Churchill, Jimmy Carter and Robin Williams among them. The same story identified the attraction's best-known performer, Pinky, as a cockatoo who rode a bicycle and appeared at the 1964 World's Fair. Pinky is worth sorting out before you dig through a box of prints. The Gardens' call for material asks for "snapshots with Pinky, the flamingos, or beneath the banyans," and the cockatoo and the flamingos were separate attractions.
The attraction left in stages. The Gardens dates the Watson Island move to 2002, when the business relaunched as Jungle Island. Miami Herald reporting places the birds' and staff's move at Jungle Island's 2003 opening. The Village bought the Red Road property on December 17, 2002, and dedicated it as a municipal park on March 8, 2003. Franz and Louise Scherr Street keeps the founders' names on the village map.
The site was protected before the Village owned it. The Miami-Dade County Historic Preservation Board designated it historic in December 1990, according to the Herald. The Gardens says it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 17, 2011, as the Parrot Jungle Historic District. When a Banyan Bowl concert lets out on a Saturday night, the crowd is leaving a listed historic district through an entrance first built for tourists who paid a quarter.
The Two Attractions With Nothing Left to Walk Through
Nothing like that survived the Serpentarium. Bill Haast opened it in 1947 on Dixie Highway, just north of SW 128th Street, near where Village Hall stands now. A huge cobra head marked the entrance. The State Archives' Florida Memory collection holds a 1954 record of Haast showing cobra handling there. Sources disagree on when the gates closed. The Village's detailed Serpentarium history says fall 1977. Its general history page says the mid-1980s. A July 2026 Gables Courier article gives 1984. The cobra head outlasted the attraction. It was moved to South Miami High, and Hurricane Andrew destroyed it in 1992. A dated snapshot of that cobra, at either location, is exactly the kind of material that could help settle the timeline.
The Rare Bird Farm is the oldest of the three ventures to fade from view. According to the Village's Flagler Grove history, zoo-animal broker Alton V. Freeman paid about $40,000 on August 3, 1938, for seven acres at the southeast corner of Flagler Boulevard/SW 102nd Street and US 1. He worked with New England bird-farm associates C.L. Sibley and G. Fred Yessler, and the farm showed birds, ostriches, flamingos and other exotic animals. The farm also raised Able and Baker, the monkeys sold to the U.S. space program who in 1959 became the first primates to survive spaceflight. Freeman sold the farm in 1961 to J. Abney Cox, Jack Knowles and Walter Peterson.
Why the Exhibit Needs Your Albums
With two of the three sites gone, the Gardens has said plainly where it expects much of the material to come from. Its Special Exhibitions page reads:
"The Pinecrest Gardens team is calling for donations (or temporary loan) of photographs, artifacts, and personal memories for inclusion in Wings, Scales & Wonder exhibit that celebrates the visionaries, animals, and experiences that contributed to shaping South Florida's identity as an international destination for nature, education, and discovery."
The Village's September 2026 Pinecrest Sun newsletter extends the request to historic film. The schedule is set. The exhibition opens with a plaque rededication on Saturday, January 16, 2027, at 5:30 p.m. The Special Exhibitions page lists it on view through May 31, 2027. The Art in the Gardens page lists public viewing from January 17 through May 30.
If you want to contribute, here is the order that makes sense:
- Scan or photograph the print first. The page asks for photos and a short note by email. Writing down who is in the picture, the year and the occasion makes a snapshot far more useful to a curator.
- Email the address the page gives. The Special Exhibitions page says to write to [email protected]. The page's own "Send Photo" button opens a message to [email protected], and the newsletter lists [email protected]. A brief note asking the team which inbox it prefers should prevent a lost message.
- Ask before handing over originals. The Gardens accepts donations or temporary loans. For artifacts and film, settle how the hand-off works before anything leaves your house.
- Expect your photo may appear online. Selected submissions will be shared on the Village's social media as well as in the exhibition.
The Same Theme, Running Through the Gardens This Season
The history exhibit is the center of a larger thread at the Gardens this season, and much of that thread is open to you before January.
The 13th Annual Student Art Contest has a theme that matches: "The Roadside Gallery: A Tribute to Old Florida's Attractions." It opens to students across Miami-Dade County on November 10, entries are due January 11, and selected work will hang in a gallery show during the 2027 Art & Design Fair. A child who has spent a few evenings with a grandparent's Parrot Jungle prints has a head start.
Photography already fills the walls. Miami Through the Lens: An Exhibition of Contemporary Photography, curated by Hartvest Project, is on view through January 3 and includes the "Beyond the Studio: Public Art in Practice" feature. The artist talk is this Saturday, October 31, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. It is a good chance to see today's Miami photographers before the Gardens hangs the snapshots of earlier visitors.
The grounds also gained a new attraction of the botanical kind. The Gardens acquired a juvenile Dragon Tree, Dracaena draco, a globally endangered Canary Island native that the newsletter calls a rare specialty specimen in Florida. Look for a fifteen-foot, unbranched, yucca-like trunk near the Blue-Beaked Yuccas in the dry Lake Garden.
The former Parrot Bowl's fall calendar:
- November 7, 8 p.m.: Allyson Briggs & The Dan Gabel Big Band, "America: Together in Harmony," with Level A at $55–60 and Level B at $45–50.
- December 12, 8 p.m.: Allan Harris Sings Nat King Cole Christmas.
- December 19, 8 p.m.: Orquesta La Oferta Honors El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, part of the 5th Annual Tropical Nights series.
Nights of Lights runs on select nights from December 4 through December 27, 6:30 to 10 p.m. Opening night includes a 7 p.m. tree lighting and carolers. The September newsletter listed the run as ending December 23, but the current event page adds December 26 and 27. Tickets are marked "Coming Soon." The Sunday Farmers Market continues every week, listed from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. A Sunday market stop is an easy time to walk under the banyans and picture the old postcards in the place they were taken.
If a box of Parrot Jungle prints, a Serpentarium snapshot or a Rare Bird Farm keepsake has been in your family for decades, now is the time to get it to the Gardens. That kind of family history is part of what Randi Connell knows about Pinecrest, house by house and street by street. To talk about the village's past or your own plans in it, Randi Connell is glad to hear from you. Schedule a Consultation.
