Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2024L00408:front:0:p241
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2024L00408
Segment Type: other
Provision Reference: 
Character Range: 755139–757812

activities of everyday life.  Prospect Parkway extended from the National Stadium on the lakeshore, sited directly opposite the government buildings, to the forested slopes of Mount Ainslie.  Griffin described the Parkway as a 'formal plaisance' and Marion Mahony's perspective from the summit of Mt Ainslie clearly shows a sweep of space, lined on both sides by informal drifts of trees, which grade into formal avenue plantings.  Griffin's plaisance, a grand promenade under a canopy of trees, was a landscape element in the tradition of the Mall in Central Park or the Midway Plaisance on the south side of Chicago, both design [sic] by Frederick Law Olmsted.  Griffin's Plaisance, however, was not planned as a meeting place in a park but as a meeting place in the city, a green cross-section cut through a high-density residential district and directly accessible to all citizens in the Capital from the Prospect Parkway station, a stop on the city railway line, which was sited on axis but below grade.

    Crowds of people could be expected to spill out of the Prospect Parkway station to attend sporting events in the National Stadium; to visit the opera, theatre or museums, to go shopping.  Residents in the nearby courtyard apartments could be expected to use Prospect Parkway as an urban park – a human scaled, modulated space under the canopy of trees, with an exhilarating prospect down the great sweep of its central greensward.  Griffin's plaisance was intended to be a natural funnel of activity, a vital place in the life of the city.  To walk along it, the central axis of the city, would be to experience transition from the public realm to the private realm…

    To turn then from the set-piece, to leave the lake edge or the stadium, and walk along the plaisance would be to experience a series of transitions from the civic, formal and spectacular to the private, informal and relaxed…  To draw people to this upper end of the Mall [the plaisance], Griffin planned a Casino, a facility for popular entertainment and relaxation…'  (Weirick 1991, pp. 15-16)

The formal development of the Land Axis on the northern side of the Molonglo was, however, slow to start.  Griffin identified it as 'Prospect Parkway' on his later plans.  In 1920 the construction of a railway line from Kingston to Civic passed across the alignment of Anzac Parade just south of the line of Amaroo Street (where it can still be made out on the northern edge of the current CIT grounds).  However, the line was short-lived, the bridge over the Molonglo River being washed away in a flood in 1922 and it was never replaced.  The longer-term plans to have the main-line railway