This article traces West End’s history using Queensland Places, the State Library of Queensland (SLQ), Brisbane City Council heritage citations and the Museum of Brisbane, and it names the source for each claim.
Name and early land sales
Queensland Places says the name West End is presumed to have been inspired by West End, London. It records the area’s Aboriginal name as Kurilpa, and says the name was recorded as a locality until the closure of the Kurilpa post office at the corner of Hardgrave Road and Dornoch Terrace. SLQ lists John Hardgrave purchasing six acres in the area in 1860 and a West End Estate of 200 allotments in 1863.
Queensland Places describes West End throughout the 1850s and 1860s as a district of farm families. It lists a post office (1874), a school in Vulture Street (1875) and a Congregational church in Brighton Road (1878), and says the ferry service across to Toowong began in 1876.
Boundary Street
The Museum of Brisbane says West End and Spring Hill still bear the marks of racial division in the form of Boundary streets, which delineated areas where Aboriginal people were policed to not enter after evening curfew.
Along Boundary Street, Queensland Places says the Boundary Hotel was first licensed in 1864. SLQ says the original hotel was a wooden building built by Donald Wilson, and that John Wilson sold it in 1922 to Thomas Corrigan. A 2014 SLQ article described the hotel as celebrating 150 years of continuous trading.
Queensland Places says a row of shops did not appear in Boundary Street until the 1880s. It dates a horsedrawn tram service from Melbourne Street into Boundary Street to 1887. The Boundary Street school of arts is given the dates 1889 to 1968, and Queensland Places says it began a civic precinct that later included the Methodist Church, the Gospel Hall, the Kurilpa Hall and the Lyric picture theatre (1909), with a creche (1918) and kindergarten opened a short way south. It describes the Kurilpa library, built by Brisbane City Council in Boundary Road in 1929, as Queensland’s first purpose-built local library.
River, floods and transport
Queensland Places says the 1893 floods covered all the shoreline around West End, sweeping away several houses at Hill End. It adds that the land left bare was purchased in 1916 by the South Brisbane Council to create Orleigh Park. A comprehensive electric tram service ran along Vulture and Hargrave Streets from 1898, and it was extended to the St Lucia ferry service at the end of Hoogley Street in 1929.
The same source records at least two proposals for a bridge across the river to St Lucia, in 1885 and 1940, and says neither materialised. It says West End was spared the burden of a through motorway and remained an industrial and residential suburb, albeit with low house prices. In January 2011, according to Queensland Places, Brisbane River waters reached West End as far as Montague Road.
Industry
Queensland Places says industry was located along Montague Road, a notable early example being the South Brisbane Gas Works, next to Davies Park, c1885. It names Thomas Dixon’s tannery along Ferry Road and a boot and shoe factory (1908) on the other side of Montague Road as landmarks, and Tristram’s softdrink factory in Boundary Street (1928) as a later landmark. The source says the factory was designed in the Spanish mission style and was later converted to a supermarket with drive-in shops. It also mentions manufacturing employment in gas, glass and pipe-making.
Queensland Places says the general character of West End altered in the late 1980s as industry withdrew to outer metropolitan Brisbane. It also records that the shoreline from Hill End to the Merivale Bridge was raised with rockfill, covering the river baths (1921) at Davies Park, and that Riverside Drive was constructed in 1979.
Greek community
Sources describe the Greek community’s arrival in slightly different ways. Council’s heritage citation for the Greek Evangelical Church at 225 Boundary Street says the timber hall was built in 1910 for the West End Gospel Mission, a philanthropic branch of the Methodist Church. A thirteen perch allotment in Boundary Street was purchased in 1910, and funds for the hall had been raised by 1909. The citation says the hall operated as a mission until around 1945. The place has been a local heritage place since 30 October 2000.
It says that around 1950 a group of Greek migrants approached the Brisbane City Mission about the hall, having used a room in the West End School of Arts for religious meetings. It adds that members of the Greek Evangelical Church took custody of the property in 1960. Queensland Places instead says a substantial Greek community emerged as early as 1950, when it acquired the Methodist Gospel Hall for the Greek Evangelical Church. The two accounts differ on when the church obtained the hall, and this article does not choose between them.
The citation says its change in use reflects the strong migrant presence in West End, especially following the Second World War, and that Greek speakers made up 16.1 per cent of the suburb’s population in 1991. SLQ says it was estimated that 75% of Brisbane’s Greek population lived in West End by 1980. Queensland Places says the Greek Orthodox Church in South Brisbane had over 1350 adherents in 1983, and that during the late 1980s the Greek community began to be displaced by Vietnamese immigrants.
Community and population
SLQ describes West End as the birthplace of the Blue Nursing Service. Queensland Places notes the Aboriginal and Islander Independent Community School (1986) in Dornoch Terrace. It gives census populations of 6,278 in 1976, 5,965 in 1991, 5,741 in 2001, 6,206 in 2006 and 8,061 in 2011.
Related reading
For the wider river setting, see the history of South Bank and the history of the Brisbane River. For food and eating out in the suburb, see the West End food guide.
*Sources were read on 9 November 2026; SLQ pages could not be re-read on that date (HTTP 403), so SLQ claims carry over from the earlier verified fetch.*
Frequently asked questions
What was West End’s Aboriginal name?
Queensland Places records the area’s Aboriginal name as Kurilpa.
Where does the name West End come from?
Queensland Places says the name is presumed to have been inspired by West End, London.
When did the Greek Evangelical Church obtain its hall?
Sources differ: Council’s citation says the church took custody in 1960, while Queensland Places says a Greek community acquired the hall as early as 1950.
When was the Boundary Hotel first licensed?
Queensland Places says the Boundary Hotel in Boundary Street was first licensed in 1864.
