[3] For two decades following the French conquest of Saigon, the site that would become the present-day Quách Thị Trang was part of a large marsh known as Marais Boresse.

[4] However, the present-day square was not laid out until 1910, when the government approved a 1.25-million-piastre project for sanitation of the Boresse marsh which also included the planning of the new railway station and the construction of the Saigon–Cholon boulevard (modern-day Trần Hưng Đạo).

According to Vu Quang Hung, who was then a student and the head of the secret "Quach Thi Trang Monument Construction Committee", the erection of the bust was carefully planned to take place very quickly in late September 1964 during a protest against the Vũng Tàu Charter proclaimed by General Nguyễn Khánh, when the crowd surrounded the site and concealed the monument construction.

[10][11] In 1966, an equestrian statue of Trần Nguyên Hãn, a 15th-century general who fought in the Lam Sơn uprising, was also erected in the center of the roundabout.

[16] Upon the completion of the metro station, the square was temporarily restored and traffic was rerouted to create a pedestrian zone in front of Bến Thành Market.