Centenary Place, Heritage-listed park in Fortitude Valley, Queensland, Australia
Centenary Place is a park at 85 Wickham Street in Fortitude Valley, bounded by Wickham, Ann and Gotha Streets, covering 8,748 square metres. Henry Moore, the council parks superintendent, laid it out with a formal plan of curved paths, garden beds, grassed areas and low sandstone retaining walls. A central path was aligned toward the entrance of the proposed Holy Name Cathedral.
Centenary Place was designed by Henry Moore, the council's Parks Superintendent, and built after the council cleared existing buildings in 1924; the park opened in 1925 on 8,748 square metres bounded by Wickham, Ann and Gotha Streets. It was one of the last civic projects of the former Brisbane City Council before Greater Brisbane was formed in 1925. A Centenary Celebrations Committee and Centenary Fund paid for the memorial, alongside commemorative medals, a John Oxley statue and the founding of the John Oxley Library. The park was refurbished in 1999/2000.
The Robert Burns statue, commissioned by the Brisbane Caledonian Society and Burns Club in 1929, follows the tradition of placing the poet's back to a church; had the planned Holy Name Cathedral been built, his back would have faced it. Burns Night gatherings have centred on the statue since its installation. The Byrnes statue, by Bertram Mackennal, was moved here in 1925 from Petrie Bight.
The park has multiple entry points from Wickham Street, Ann Street, and Gotha Street, allowing visitors to enter from different directions. Several public transportation options nearby make reaching the site straightforward.
From 1962 to the mid-1970s the park was Brisbane's designated people's forum, a speaker's corner where hundreds gathered on Sunday afternoons; campaigners for Aboriginal rights spoke there in the 1960s and 1970s. The council provided no new official forum until King George Square in 1990.
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