Carlton Gardens

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The Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton Gardens
panorama
South of the plant
IMAX Melbourne

The Carlton Gardens are a park in the Australian city of Melbourne . Together with the Royal Exhibition Building located in it, they are a UNESCO World Heritage Site .

location

Carlton Gardens are on the northeastern edge of the central business district in the suburb of Carlton .

The 26 hectare facility houses the Royal Exhibition Building , the Melbourne Museum and an IMAX cinema, tennis courts and an award-winning children's playground.

The rectangular floor plan is bounded by Victoria Street, Rathdowne Street, Carlton Street and Nicholson Street. From the exhibition building, the area slowly descends to the south-west and north-east.

description

The gardens are a major example of Victorian era landscaping with extensive lawns and a variety of European and Australian trees.

The trees planted include English oak , silver poplar , plane tree , elm , conifers , palm trees, cedar , turkey , araucaria and evergreen plants such as the large-leaved fig . These are combined with beds made of annual flowers and shrubs.

A network of tree-lined paths serves as the axes of the garden, emphasizing the fountains and the architecture of the exhibition building. This includes the grand avenue made of plane trees, which leads to the exhibition building. Two picturesque little lakes decorate the southern part of the park. The north part houses the museum, tennis courts, the facilities for maintaining the park, the house of the curator and the playground designed as a Victorian maze .

The elm avenues made from English elm and Ulmus × hollandica are particularly important . You are among the few elm avenues worldwide that did not fall victim to the elm disease . The garden also has a specimen (of only five worldwide) of the Acmena ingens shrub , an exceptional Harpephyllum caffrum , the largest bald cypress ( Taxodium distichum ) of Victoria, and large specimens of the black cypress and the large-leaved fig southwest of the exhibition building.

In the park live possums , ducks, the owls Schwalm ( Podargus strigoides) and other city birds.

The garden has three major fountains: The Exhibition Fountain , designed for the 1880 exhibition by sculptor Joseph Hochgurtel, the French Fountain, and the Westgarth Drinking Fountain .

history

In 1839, Superintendent Charles La Trobe exempted large areas of land around the original Melbourne metropolitan area from sale. Most of this area was later sold and subdivided or used for various public facilities, however a number of larger areas were permanently reserved for public parks such as Carlton Gardens, Flagstaff Gardens , Fitzroy Gardens , Treasury Gardens and Kings Domain .

Around 1856 the site came under the administration of the city, which commissioned Edward La Trobe Bateman with the design of a park. The routing of the paths and other parts of the design were built, although the lack of funds for the maintenance of the park led to frequent criticism.

In the 1870s the park came back under the control of the Victoria government and minor changes were made under the direction of Clement Hodgkinson . Shortly thereafter, the facility was heavily redesigned for the 1880 World's Fair in Melbourne . The work was done by the architect Joseph Reed ; the well-known local gardener William Sangster was contracted to redevelop the gardens.

The exhibition building was completed in 1880. The additions made to the northern part of the exhibition hall for the world exhibition held that year were demolished after the exhibition closed its doors on April 30, 1881. The Melbourne Centennial Exhibition , held in 1888, celebrated a century of European settlement in Australia.

The curator's house was completed in 1891 and John Guilfoyle moved in. The first Australian Parliament opened in the Exhibition Hall in 1901. The western extension became the seat of the Parliament of Victoria for the next 27 years .

During the time of the Spanish flu in 1919, the buildings were used as an emergency hospital. In 1928 the park fence was removed except for the blue stone base. During the Second World War, the buildings were used by the Royal Australian Air Force . From 1948 to 1961, part of the complex served as a reception center for immigrants.

In 2001 Taylor Cullity Lethlean and Mary Jeavons won a landscaping award for the new maze-shaped children's playground they designed and built under their direction. After several years of lobbying by Melbourne City Council, in July 2004 the Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens were added to the World Heritage List at the 28th session of the World Heritage Committee in Suzhou , China.

The exhibition building is further used for exhibitions, e.g. B. Melbourne International Flower and Horticultural Show used. The Melbourne Exhibition and Convention Center in Southbank , opened in 1996, has more modern facilities and is now the premier address for exhibitions and conventions in Melbourne.

Web links

Commons : Carlton Gardens, Melbourne  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 37 ° 48 ′ 22 ″  S , 144 ° 58 ′ 13 ″  E