Story and photographs by Jennifer Harris
The spires of St Patrick’s Cathedral rise behind the ANZAC Garden in the Rockefeller Center
A tiny formal roof garden with a green metal frog spouting water into an intense blue pool… Below, the splendor of 5th Avenue stretched north and south on a bright autumn day. Opposite rose Saks department store, and there were the spectacular Neo-Gothic spires of St Patrick’s Cathedral. But what was that behind the frog and smothered in scarlet begonia? I leaned across the edge of the pool, brushed aside flowers and found a small, battered sign with an unexpected message which you can read below.
I asked one of the attendants what she knew of the history of the garden. Nothing! (Or simply, ‘It’s just part of the Rockefeller Center’.) Not one of the garden officials at Open House New York 2025 knew that this was an ANZAC war memorial garden, dedicated in 1940. This exquisite garden, rising high above the bustle of the Rockefeller Center, and visually connected to St Patrick’s Cathedral with one of the most thrilling borrowed background landscapes of any garden anywhere, is hidden in plain sight in Midtown.
We have Nola Luxford to thank for the ANZAC garden at 620 5th Avenue, Manhattan. This creative, flamboyant New Zealand-American actress, Olympic sports commentator, radio announcer and writer asked the Rockefellers for permission to install an ANZAC garden in the British Empire Building of the Rockefeller Center, and they said ‘yes’. What an achievement for a woman in a masculine environment, from so far away and proposing a powerful new symbol of two distant countries in the heart of New York, which is itself a symbol of the USA at that very spot. The nation is celebrated in the sweep of 5th Avenue, the majesty of St Patrick’s Cathedral and the sober elegance of the Rockefeller Center. There was no connection to New Zealand and Australia, but the young New Zealander’s energy and determination must have been formidable and—in the case of the Rockefellers—irresistible.
Anzac Garden commemorative plaque
Nola Luxford was born in 1895 in Hunterville in the North Island, New Zealand. In 1919 she moved to the US. Within a year, her extraordinary vitality and talent saw her perform in her first Hollywood film, the first of nineteen between 1920 and 1935. She also worked on radio broadcasts with the NBC during World War II when she was known as ‘Angel of the ANZACs’. Beyond acting and broadcasting, she set up the ANZAC Club of New York to provide a home away from home for visiting soldiers. It was at 106 W 56th Street, only a short walk from the Rockefeller Center. She lived until 98 years old, having married three times, made the often-insurmountable transition from silent films to talkies, and having given her time and creativity again and again to the New Zealand and Australian communities in a foreign land.
Nola Luxford added Australian and New Zealand plants to the work of Ralph Hancock, the landscaper of the Rockefeller Center. After moving from the UK and settling in the US, Ralph Hancock ran a landscaping business called English Gardens Inc. As his original gardens for the Rockefeller Center were international, with references to Japan, The Netherlands, Spain, France and Italy, it is safe to assume that the Antipodean addition was not out of place in his eyes.
In the Luxford design, the bright blue central pool at the heart of the ANZAC garden represented the Pacific Ocean, with New Zealand plants on one side and Australian plants on the other. Nola Luxford’s plants have long gone, but the classical shape with its central pool remains.
There are five gardens at the Rockefeller Center. The ANZAC Garden is on top of the British Empire Building (1932), the middle of three Rockefeller Center buildings on 5th Avenue. La Maison Française (The French House), is the southern building at 610 5th Avenue. The two names are inscribed at knee height on the Rockefeller Center on 5th Avenue at street level. Two rooftop gardens run in parallel from the British Empire Building and La Maison Française and look onto the avenue. They are the most intact of the 1930s garden designs. Between these two buildings, runs ‘The Channel’, a fanciful reference to the English Channel running between France and Britain. It is a long, narrow plaza and water garden leading to the iconic ice rink and Paul Manship’s Prometheus statue. This is the busiest part of New York during the Holiday-New Year period.
The Rockefeller gardens were restored in 1987, the same year that the 19-building Rockefeller Center entered the National Register of Historic Places.
The frog spouts water into the ‘Pacific Ocean’
ANZAC Day memorial services have been held many times at 620 5th Avenue, but April 25 is not the only time of the year that ANZAC alliances with the US have been commemorated. Particularly noteworthy is the 1943 visit by Eleanor Roosevelt, diplomat, social activist and politically powerful First Lady of wartime President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In June 1943, she rededicated the garden and recorded the visit in ‘My Day’, a national syndicated newspaper column she wrote from 1935 to 1961.
‘The Anzac Garden celebration yesterday afternoon was a touching ceremony. This little garden on the roof of the British Empire Building, New York City, is in the shadow of the big Radio City tower. A little reflecting pool symbolizes the Pacific Ocean, and on either side are the little gardens of Australia and New Zealand. A very charming statue of two young people, kneeling back-to-back, symbolizes the youth of the two nations. The garden is to be rededicated each year to those who died in the last war and in this war to preserve freedom throughout the world. Dr. Evatt** was there yesterday and Mr. G. S. Cox, First Secretary of the New Zealand legation.
Afterwards, I went over for a few minutes to the club on West 56th Street, which is very homelike and pleasant and must mean a great deal to these boys who are so far away from home.’
The Australian War Memorial has a photograph of Mrs Roosevelt standing by the pool. In 1943, a sculpture representing youth was still in the garden.
[**Dr Evatt was an Australian politician and judge of the High Court of Australia.]
Looking across to visitors at La Maison Française in the parallel garden
From garden height, another New York secret is revealed, this time at St Patrick’s Cathedral where you can see the nineteenth century building preparations that were made for flying buttresses—the great stone wings that emerge from cathedrals such as Notre Dame de Paris and are engineered to counter the massive outward thrust of stone. Building during the financial constraints of the American Civil War, Catholic Church leaders opted to conserve funds by changing from a stone to a plaster ceiling which was lighter and would not require flying buttresses, but the relic of the architectural change of mind is written into the building and the ANZAC Garden offers one of the best views of it.
The garden is available for private events and can be visited during Open House New York, the once-a-year autumn weekend when visitors can access many usually private spaces. That was when I visited. A week later, I went purposefully to the 7th floor of the Saks store to look across to the garden. A twilight wedding had just started with the flood-lit Cathedral spires as the magnificent backdrop. Without a private event, or Open House New York, you can rarely visit. If you look up from street level, however, you see tips of plants in the formal garden and sometimes people peeking over the wall. There were long lines for both gardens during Open House 2025. The beauty of the gardens was such that people lingered longer than the event officials had planned. When the attendants began to ask people to leave the ANZAC Garden to make room for more visitors, one of them said to me, ‘But you may stay’. She had been delighted to learn more about a New Zealand and Australian commemorative connection in this most unlikely place. Perhaps in future years, visitors will be given more information about the ANZAC background to one of the most moving and beautiful places in New York.