[1] On 7 December 1941, the United States of America entered World War II following the bombing of the American fleet at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii by Japanese carrier-borne aircraft.

Plans to defend Australia from an anticipated Japanese invasion and to use Queensland as a support base for the conduct of the Pacific war were implemented quickly.

General Douglas MacArthur, Commander in Chief of the Allied Forces, Southwest Pacific, was based in the AMP building at the corner of Queen Street and Edward Street in Brisbane, and General Sir Thomas Blamey, Commander in Chief of the Australian Forces, used the recently constructed University of Queensland buildings at St Lucia.

[1] In the Protection of Persons and Property Order No.1, gazetted 23 December 1941, Premier William Forgan Smith, with powers conferred by Regulation 35a, National Security (General) Regulations, ordered the Brisbane City Council to construct 200 public surface shelters in the city area.

Initially, 20 of the Local Authorities were expected to construct a minimum total of 133 surface shelters, which were supposed to be able to withstand the blast of a 500-pound bomb bursting 50 feet (15 m) away.

However, after plans were amended, 23 Local Authorities outside Brisbane, excluding Thursday Island, ended up possessing a total of 129 public shelters: 123 surface and six underground.

Townsville, Toowoomba, Gladstone, and Ayr denied any liability for costs, and a Bill had to be passed in December 1942 to force their compliance.

In an address delivered to the Constitutional Club in Brisbane in February 1942, Costello noted that "if the emergency for their use does not arise ...(unused shelters)... remain in brick and concrete, in many cases having no further value and being a possible source of nuisance".

This movement pursued the rational use of modern materials and principles of functionalist planning and established a visual aesthetic largely inspired by the machine.

It was part of an architecture employing the language of vertical and horizontal volumes and planes, floating flat roofs, masses set against voids and monumentality.

[1] The first of Costello's reusable designs is the pillbox with double- cantilevered roof slab, or "park" type shelter.

[1] The second design was the pillbox with single-cantilevered roof slab, or "bus" type shelter, as it was called in the original Brisbane City Council list.

Two of these "colonnade" types were built — referred to in the Brisbane City Council list as "bus (stone)"— and only one survives, at King Edward Park.

The saltwater mains, slit trenches, and sirens disappeared, as did the many standard pillboxes that had stood in the middle of the streets of the Central Business District.

However, of Costello's 58 reusable public surface shelters, 20 have survived; the removal of their blast walls, as planned, had given them a renewed purpose.

[1] The blast walls of the air raid shelter at Albert Park (North) were removed according to plan after World War II.

The shelter is unpainted, and the soffit shows evidence of hasty removal of the blast walls; some reinforcing steel is visible protruding downwards.

[1] Albert Park (North) air raid shelter was listed on the Queensland Heritage Register on 31 May 2005 having satisfied the following criteria.

Designed to afford protection to the civilian population of Brisbane in the event of air raid attacks or other emergencies, the air raid shelter located on the footpath to the north-east corner of Albert Park is important in demonstrating the impact of World War II on the civilian population of Brisbane.

Also, there are not many types of structures built by the Brisbane City Council during World War II, for wartime purposes, which survive.