[2] In February 1916, the mayor W. R. Warmington unveiled an honour board listing the names of those from Ithaca who had volunteered for war service.

Although unveiled at the Picture Palace in Enoggera Terrace, Red Hill, the intention was that the honour board would be permanently located in the Ithaca Town Council Chambers.

A week after the Armistice, the Town Council again considered planting trees with each one to individually commemorate a resident who had died in military service.

[10][11] Fundraising via donations, fetes, concerts and other activities continued until in June 1921 the Council decided that the funds (by then £650) were sufficient to consider designs of the memorial.

[13] In July 1921, a decision had been made to commission a monument which would be located on Cook's Hill and would have the names of the fallen engraved upon it.

[14][15] The Ithaca War Memorial was finally unveiled on 25 February 1922 by Sir Matthew Nathan, Governor of Queensland.

[1] In the first decade of the 20th century, Ithaca experienced a housing and population boom largely attributable to the expansion of the tramways through the area.

[1] Because of the hilly terrain, many of the new streets were divided, leaving embankments which the Ithaca Town Council considered were cheaper to plant and beautify than to cut down.

Only small sections of the Waterworks Road rockeries remain, and most of the Cook's Hill garden was destroyed when the Paddington Tramways Substation was erected in 1929–30.

He was head gardener on Alexander Stewart's Glen Lyon estate at Ashgrove for at least seven years before he went to work for the Ithaca Town Council.

The word "cenotaph", commonly applied to war memorials at the time, literally means "empty tomb".

Many memorials honour all who served from a locality, not just the dead, providing valuable evidence of community involvement in the war.

[1] Australian war memorials are also valuable evidence of imperial and national loyalties, at the time, not seen as conflicting; the skills of local stonemasons, metalworkers and architects; and of popular taste.

[1] Many of the First World War monuments have been updated to record local involvement in later conflicts, and some have fallen victim to unsympathetic re-location and repair.

The site includes two mature ficus trees on the western side and a planted embankment down to Latrobe Terrace.

Steps lead to the memorial from each of the four sides forming a cross in plan, with the overall geometry softened by planting, retaining walls and the steep slope of the site.

Each face bears a semi circular recess with the word "Ithaca" carved in relief and pateras on each side.

[1] Ithaca War Memorial and Park was listed on the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992 having satisfied the following criteria.

War Memorials are important in demonstrating the pattern of Queensland's history as they are representative of a recurrent theme that involved most communities throughout the state.

The park also has special associations with landscape gardener Alexander Jolly as one of the few remaining examples of his work, and with monumental masonry firm A H Thurlow.