New Farm Park is a heritage-listed public park , designed by Albert Herbert Foster and built from 1914 to 1950 by Gladwin Legge & Co. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 7 February 2005.
The Park currently covers 15.0076 hectares (37.085 acres) of land, and is bounded by Brunswick Street and Sydney Street, New Farm.
Early History
Prior to European settlement, the New Farm area was covered with bush and dotted with shallow lagoons.It supported a variety of wildlife and proved a bountiful resource to local Aborigines. The area was called Binkin-ba meaning place of the land tortoise.
Following the founding of the Moreton Bay convict settlement on the Brisbane River, the land on which the park now stands was initially a farm.
Sub-Division
By 1843 New Farm was subdivided into suburban allotments around the main thoroughfares later named Brunswick Street and Merthyr Road. ‘Suburban allotments’ approximated or were larger than the street blocks that were formed when residential subdivisions occurred 50 years later. They sold for small farms or for speculation. Around Bowen Terrace and the intersection of Ann and Brunswick Streets the allotments were smaller.
A racecourse was built on the site in 1846, which operated until 1913, when the land for the park was acquired by the Brisbane City Council. The Queensland Governor Hamilton Goold-Adams conducted the official opening of the park, which was delayed until July 1919 because of World War I.