On this day 99 years ago, Canberra was officially given its name by Lady Denham, the wife of the Governor General, at a ceremony on the site of the current Parliament House. One of the sticking points in the negotiations for federation which occurred in the 1890s was whether Sydney or Melbourne should be Australia’s capital city. The matter was resolved through an agreement that a new capital should be built in New South Wales at least 100 miles from Sydney.
In 1908 the site for the new city was selected, and an international competition for the design of the city was held, with a design by Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahon Griffin being declared the winner in 1911. In 1913 Walter Burley Griffin was appointed Federal Capital Director of Design and Construction, and the work proceeded slowly because of bureaucratic interference and a shortage of funds. The provisional Parliament House was finally opened in 1927, allowing the prime minister Stanley Bruce and the rest of the government to move in.
Development of the city continued at a slow pace until the National Capital Development Commission was formed in 1957, and the lake which was the centrepiece of Griffin’s design, now known as Lake Burley Griffin, was finally finished in 1964. The provisional Parliament House was not replaced by a permanent Parliament House until 1988.