A View of Taihoku New Park before Construction

Taihoku New Park is the old name of 228 Peace Memorial Park. It was constructed in 1899 and was originally named Taihoku Park. It was Taiwan’s first urban park built according to city planning. Since it was completed ten years after Yuanshan Park in 1897, “new” was added to its name.
Before New Park was built, the land designated for it only had on it a Mazu temple; the rest was uncultivated. (Its scope roughly comprised a rectangle area inside Wenwu Street, Nanmen Street, Dongmen Street, and Shifang Street.) In 1913, the Japanese memorialized Viscount Kodama Gentarō and Cabinent Minister Gotō Shinpei by tearing down the Mazu temple and building a Kodama & Gotō Memorial Hall in its stead (which is now the National Taiwan Museum). On the rest of the land designated for the park, the Office of the Governor-General built rows of long, connected rooms used as official dormitories. These can be seen in the left side of the picture.