Cathays Park was formerly part of
Cardiff Castle grounds. The present day character of the area owes much to successive holders of the title the
Marquess of Bute, and especially the
3rd Marquess of Bute, an extremely wealthy landowner, and to his gardener,
Andrew Pettigrew. The Butes acquired much of the lands in Cathays through investment and by inheritance through a marriage to Charlotte Windsor in 1766. The idea of acquiring the Cathays House park as an open public space was raised in 1858 and again in 1875. In 1887 it was suggested the park could commemorate
Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. Negotiations did not begin until 1892, when Lord Bute agreed to sell 38 acres for £120,000 (equivalent to £ in ). The idea of relocating the Town Hall to the park was controversial, but it was also proposed to locate a new University College building there. On 14 December 1898, the
local council bought the entire of land for £161,000 from the Marquess of Bute
The Development of the Civic Centre in 1905 Cathays Park has had three very distinct phases of development, the first phase was built in the
Edwardian Baroque style, This led to the third phase of building from the 1960s, which although built in
Portland stone as with the rest of the buildings in Cathays Park, was in a
modernist architectural style. who would later go on to design the
Methodist Central Hall in Westminster. These were the first two buildings of the ensemble, and have an almost uniform façade treatment. The east and west
pavilions of both façades are identical in design, except for the attic storeys, which are decorated with allegorical sculptural groups. On the Crown Court these are
Science and Industry, sculpted by Donald McGill, and
Commerce and Industry, by
Paul Raphael Montford, while on the City Hall are
Music and Poetry by Paul Montford and
Unity and Patriotism by
Henry Poole. The courts and the town hall were followed by the main building of the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire (now Cardiff University), designed by
W. D. Caröe and completed in 1905. The third plot on the site facing City Hall lawn went empty until 1910, when the competition for a National Museum of Wales was won by the architects
Arnold Dunbar Smith and Cecil Brewer. The design parts from the
Edwardian Baroque of the Law Courts and City Hall and is more akin to American
Beaux-Arts architecture, particularly in the entrance hall where a similarity to
McKim, Mead and White's later
Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has been noted. The Museum site was not bounded to the north by an avenue so there were scarcely any limits on the depth of the building; the 1910 plan was almost twice as deep as it was broad. The First World War, however, ensured that progress on the building was very slow. By 1927 part of the East range, with the lecture theatre funded by
William Reardon Smith, was complete. Further extensions came only in the 1960s and 1990s; these remained faithful to the original design on the exterior (and included sculpture by
Dhruva Mistry) but are of a neutral character on the inside. The final plots in the north of the park were occupied by government offices and university departments. The foundations for a governmental office block were laid in 1914, but work ceased almost immediately due to World War I. Construction of the Crown Buildings (now Cathays Park 1) was undertaken between 1932-38, initially as a headquarters for the
Welsh Board of Health. This was followed in the 1970s by Cathays Park 2, a vast administrative block for the
Welsh Office. Although the architect and town planner, John B. Hilling, in his study
Black Gold, White City: The History and Architecture of Cardiff Civic Centre published in 2016, acknowledged the architects' efforts to respect Cathays Park 2's surroundings, by use of a symmetrical plan laid out on a clear axis, the building's
Brutalist style has been much criticised. Both Hilling and the architectural historian
John Newman quote the judgement of the ''
Architects' Journal''; "a perversely appropriate symbol of closed inaccessible government" [suggesting] a bureaucracy under siege". Cathays Park 1 and 2 have seen 'Cathays Park' become used as a
metonym, firstly for the Welsh Office, and after devolution in 1999, for the
Welsh Government's civil servants and ministerial offices. The last plot on the site was occupied by the University of Wales, which constructed a series of university departments, laboratories and schools on the site from the 1950s to the very early 21st century. The development has been criticised as being too dense, the university's appetite for accommodation outdoing the limitations of the site.
Dewi-Prys Thomas, the first professor of architecture at the University of Wales, expressed dismay at, "the injury done to the Civic Centre, with the colossal pile of buildings thrusting up against the main University College."
Appreciation In his
Glamorgan volume of the
Pevsner Buildings of Wales series,
Newman described Cathays Park as "the finest civic centre in the British Isles". Later studies generally concur. Hilling considered the park "an outstanding example of an architectural ensemble which illustrates a significant stage in Welsh history". Professor Ian Morley, historian of the built environment, considered that Cathays was "matchless in terms of quality and meaning, [and helped] Cardiff punch well above its weight in terms of
demographic stature". Revisiting the subject in his 2018 revised
The Architecture of Wales: from the first to the twenty-first century, Hilling agreed, contending that Cathays validated, "as much as anything, [Cardiff]'s claim to city status and national capital". ==Buildings==