ANZAC War Memorial, Sydney
by Greg O'Beirne, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:ANZACWarMemorial1_gobeirne.jpg, and used under GNU Free Documentation License
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The ANZAC War Memorial is the main military monument of Sydney, Australia. It is located at the south end of Hyde Park, on the eastern edge of Sydney's central business district. It was completed in 1934 in the Art Deco style, indeed, it was regarded as the finest Art Deco structure in Australia.
The ANZAC War Memorial was built of concrete. The exterior is clad with pink granite. It is crowned with a roof like a stepped pyramid. The memorial sits on a cruciform pedestal. Inside it is an administrative office and a museum. The building was designed by C. Bruce Dellit while sculptures and figural reliefs were done by Rayner Hoff.
The interior is largely faced in white marble. It features a domed ceiling adorned with 120,000 gold stars - one for each of New South Wales' military volunteers during World War I. The mail hall is entered through broad stairways on the north and south sides while the lower section is entered through ground-level doorways on the east and west sides.
The main focus of the interior is Rayner Hoff's Sacrifice, a monumental bronze sculpture of a nude youth, representing a soldier, held aloft on his shield by three female figures, representing his mother, sister and wife. The male figure's nudity was so shocking at the time of the monument's opening, that two other even more controversial figural sculptures designed by Hoff were never installed at their intended positions - the eastern and western pedestals of the memorial remains empty to this day, partly as a result of opposition the local Catholic Church.
To the north of the ANZ War Memorial is a rectangular "Lake of Reflections" flanked by rows of poplars. The poplars, not native to Australia, symbolise the areas of France in which Australian troops fought. Original plans called for the construction of similar pools on each of the other sides of the building, but these were never built. There is currently a proposal by the City of Sydney to complete the second Lake of Reflection in time for the 75th anniversary of the ANZAC Memorial.
The term ANZAC in the memorial's name is an acronym for "Australian and New Zealand Army Corps", the original name for the combined corps of Australian and New Zealand troops who fought in World War I.
Rayner Hoff's sculpture Sacrifice inside the ANZAC War Memorial, Hyde Park, Sydney, Australia
by Greg O'Beirne, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:ANZACWarMemorial3_gobeirne.jpg, and used under GNU Free Documentation License
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