Dunedin’s cenotaph, designed by Auckland architect William Gummer in 1921 and unveiled in 1927, stands sentinel over Queens Gardens in the centre of the city. It has significance historically as a memorial to Dunedin citizens killed in both World Wars and architecturally as an example of the design of memorials in the wake of conflict.

In the aftermath of World War One, Dunedin, like other communities, debated the best way to acknowledge and commemorate the sacrifice made by those who had served their country, many giving their lives the Empire. After considerable to-and-froing, the Dunedin war memorial committee held a design competition for a suitable memorial. The adjudicator, Invercargill architect E.R. Wilson, selected William Gummer’s entry because it reflected the ‘great sacrifices’ and ‘mighty deeds’ of the soldiers. Gummer’s design was a soaring eight-sided column, ‘a proud assertion of manhood and triumph’, with a sacrificial urn and four crosses emerging out of the column expressing sacrifice. Richard Gross’s relief sculpture complements Gummer’s design.

The Mayor laid the foundation stone on Anzac Day, 1924. Budget constraints meant that the memorial was built of concrete with an outer casing of Carrara marble. Slabs of stone replaced the planned bronze plaques. Only a stone lion, classically inspired panels, and a further panel inscribed with a ‘the Glorious Dead 1914-1918’ were built. H.S. Bingham and Co. won the tender for construction, with a price of £8,420.

In 1927, Prince Albert, the Duke of York (later George VI) unveiled the ‘Citizens’ War Memorial’ at a ceremony with seats for 1,000 for the next of kin of the fallen soldiers, and some 800 returned servicemen. The Mayor told the crowd that the memorial expressed the citizens of Dunedin’s ‘unswerving loyalty to the throne, as well as their proud sense of the dauntless spirit in which the youth of Otago offered their lives in defence of the Empire and of the maintenance of freedom, honour and justice.’

The memorial became known as the cenotaph. The term ‘cenotaph’, came into common use in the 1920s, referring to monuments modelled on British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens’ 1919 cenotaph for London’s Whitehall. Cenotaph means ‘empty tomb’ and memorials were proportioned to represent that form. The term became so charged with meaning that it came to refer more widely to other types of memorial, whatever their shape – because in the end, all memorials, whatever their form, were ‘empty tombs.’ This seems to be so in Dunedin – the Dunedin ‘Citizens’ War Memorial’ became known as ‘The Cenotaph’, though its form is a column rather than a tomb.

Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century, the cenotaph has been the centre of Dunedin’s Anzac Day services. After World War Two a plaque commemorating the conflict was added to the memorial. In 2012, over 10,000 people gathered to remember the fallen soldiers. The cenotaph is a place for reflection and remembrance and remains the focus of Dunedin’s Anzac Day commemorations.