Ayala Triangle Gardens

The land of the present-day Ayala Triangle Gardens was once the 42-hectare (100-acre) Nielson Field, Manila's pre-World War II airport, located in the vast Hacienda de San Pedro de Macati of the Zóbel de Ayala family. When the airport was decommissioned in 1948 and transferred its present site in Nichols Field, the site was returned to the Ayalas and redeveloped as a commercial district.[3] The runways were converted into roads which now form the Triangle's boundaries: Ayala Avenue along its southwest; Paseo de Roxas along the north-northeast; and Makati Avenue to the east-southeast. Only the airport's control tower was preserved, and was converted into the Filipinas Heritage Library, and later as the Blackbird fine dining restaurant in 2014.[4]

By 1971, the Ayala Corporation moved to its new headquarters in the Triangle at the Makati Stock Exchange Center building designed by National Artist for Architecture Leandro Locsin.[5] The rest of the Triangle was then transformed into the football field known as Ugarte Field, named after the Filipino football legend of the 1930s, Sebastian Ugarte. In the 1980s, Ugarte Field was the site of regular protests against the Marcos dictatorship.

The Makati Avenue entrance of Ayala Triangle Gardens.

The Ayala Triangle Gardens is located south of Salcedo Village, a part of barangay Bel-Air by its border with barangays San Lorenzo and Urdaneta. Buildings on the Triangle include the old Makati Stock Exchange Center and Ayala Tower One (home of the Philippine Stock Exchange) along the Ayala Avenue side, and the old Nielson Tower that has since been converted into a restaurant.

The park has over a hundred trees of several different types, including rain trees, golden palms, fire trees, kamuning and podocarpus. It contains several public art pieces created by Filipino artists Ovvian Castrillo-Hill and Ral Arrogante. At the northwest corner of the Triangle is a monument to assassinated opposition leader Benigno Aquino, Jr., designed by Anastacio Caedo and erected in 1986. Two other monuments can be found on the other corners of the Triangle: the Gabriela Silang monument at the southwest tip erected in 1971, and the Muhammad Kudarat monument at the northeast tip erected in 1973, both designed by sculptor José M. Mendoza.

A recent addition to the Triangle is the row of al fresco restaurants behind the Makati Stock Exchange building. The southwest corner of the Triangle also contains a parking lot just beside the old Nielson Tower. An 80,000-square-metre (860,000 sq ft) high-grade office tower (Ayala Tower Two) is also being built on the Ayala Triangle Gardens North corner, as well as the new Mandarin Oriental Hotel, opposite its old location.[6]

In 2017, a memorial to two of Makati CBD's visionaries and builders, Joseph McMicking and Mercedes Zobel McMicking of the Zóbel de Ayala family, was unveiled at the gardens.[7]