Source for 1.1.4 can be found here: LIBPNG: PNG reference library - Browse /zlib/1.1.4 at SourceForge.net
Maybe you can build it from source and install it
Warning, off topic: This thread makes me nostalgic. Why was package management ever introduced on haiku? It used to be so great searching for application dependencies manually and figuring out where to put them 
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- zlib 1.1.4: Dropbox - File Deleted - Simplify your life
- Contact the devs: dmitrysmagin (Dmitry Smagin) Ā· GitHub
To be honest, in those days people just told you what you needed to install and that was it. I donāt remember it ever being a trial. Itās also too complicated now because it supposedly fixes everything, but does so in a way where a tinkerer canāt just move a few files around without knowing how packaged and unpackaged dependencies work. And if the package manager decides your dependencies donāt meet the criteria, you need to fix that. I do prefer the old way, because you learned how the system worked and knew how to fix it. The modern system is a lot like a modern car - itās a black box that works till it doesnāt, then you need a mechanic to fix it.
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I think you have this backwards. Every car, modern or old, looks like a black box, until you learn to fix it and understand better how it works.
The package system is not all that complicated. Sure, itās one more thing to learn about, but it isnāt a significantly more difficult part than any of the others.
And, personally, Iām much more confident in experimenting with things, knowing that I will always have a failsafe net and a way to get back to a wkring OS. How many time did I need to completely reinstall my Haiku or BeOS install because mysteriously, suddenly Terminal would fail to find bash? Or because some gcc4 compiled library ended up in the wrong directory and made my system unbootable?
If your old car never broke, you would never have learnt anything about it. The reason there are so many people who know about old cars is that they need constant maintenance and care.
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Well no. A package manager is a lot like an IDE with Intelisense/code completion. When I started programming, you needed to know the library backwards and forwards to be effective. This was the late 90ās. As the world moved on, IDEs started to help you, offer insight, make docs available in a single click, added code navigation, and scaffolded had your project through templates and code expansion. Not forgetting refactoring. So you donāt really need to know anything anymore, you just need to be able to automate your code through the ide extensions.
This is a lot like the car analogy also.
When I was using BeOS in the early 2000s, we all just learned how to maintain our system and all the tricks. Now, package manager just installs it all for me and I donāt need to even care where it is installed, and canāt really change that anyway. I stand by what I said. The old way was harder, but it taught us how to help ourselves. A package manager is a lot like code completed code. Itās correct but there was no real art in it.
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The user experience of using a terminal command to figure out the linker requirements for a binary, scouring the internet for the right libraries, and then trying to figure out where to put them and why it still doesnt work is so much better than package management. Itās fun, and you can learn something along the way. Just installing something with a single click, or by drag and drop is so lame in comparison. This is the haiku way!
Sometimes I still use the Terminal for a new build, checking dependencies, configure/cmake options to enable/disable/search for new things.
Then creating a recipe with the right dependencies, putting the files in the correct location and package it is also fun (or a pain sometimes). 
Yeah donāt get me wrong I do the same before porting with haikuporter, and itās really enjoyable getting something new to work on haiku. I am only poking fun and didnāt want to start a new war, I just think the story in this thread is a good example of why package management is important for haiku, and it reminded me that I had the same problems back in the late 90s with BeOS and it really was frustrating.
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Back in BeOS R5, it was all Terminal based, you would wrap it up in an archive and make it available on BeBits, then came ZETA, new packaging system, then came Haiku, first I needed to learn bep files, then switch to the recipes, itās been a fun ride all along.
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Oh yeah I made some beps wayyy back too
I never used zeta though. I was a teenager playing with BeOS and first tried with a free version I got on the cover of a PC magazine, and then got one of the free versions when we got the internet at home (maybe max, Iām not sure, there were a few I think)ā¦ I couldnāt afford to pay for it! And at the time solving linker problems was beyond me, I remember searching through bebits for different files and getting lots of dead links. There was some really cool looking software I just never got to work. Iām really happy that Haiku has moved on from those times!
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Back on topic Just found an old libz archive from back in the days (thanks backups ), but that was version 1.2.3 