page_title: Westgarth, Victoria
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Westgarth, Victoria / History
context_page_description: Westgarth is a locality in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It is in the local government area of the City of Darebin. It is 4 or 5 km from Melbourne's central business district, just north of Clifton Hill, and a few hundred metres south of the main part of Northcote. Merri Creek forms its western border, and to the east lies Fairfield.
  Westgarth is part of Northcote for administrative purposes, although it retains its own geographically distinct commercial centre.
context_section_description: Before European occupation, the area was home to the Wurundjeri people. Land c.2 km to the south, where Merri Creek meets the Yarra, was an early site of colonial contact, briefly home to the Native Police Corps in 1842, and a school for Aboriginal children until 1851. The precise location of the signing of Batman's Treaty, an 1835 agreement between an early colonizer John Batman and Wurundjeri elders to cede land to him, is unknown but thought to be at the western end of Cunningham Street on the banks of the Merri Creek. Land sales first occurred in the Northcote area in 1840, and land was purchased in the area then known as Northcote-by-the-Merri (now Westgarth) but not immediately developed. Three of the buyers later had streets named after them - Cunningham, Urquhart and Walker. As Northcote, Victoria developed in the mid-to-late 19th century, Northcote-by-the-Merri became known as Northcote South1. Land was gazetted for development in 1853, but development was relatively slow. All Saints Anglican church on High Street Westgarth dates to 1860 (present building, 1870), and the Bridge Hotel to 1864.
  Westgarth's development accelerated - along with that of many other Melbourne suburbs - in the economic boom of the 1880s. As the children of the Gold Rush generation formed their own families, Melbourne's population swelled. The Victorian Parliament reacted by using railway lines to open up new housing areas. The railway line from Clifton Hill to Alphington was opened in 1884, and the railway station was linked to Melbourne via a western loop in 1888. A cable tram line down High Street to Clifton Hill was opened in 1886, faltered after the land market collapse of 1892, and opened and closed again until reopening permanently in 1901. Building continued through the Edwardian era and into the 1920s, and in 1925 the Northcote tram (now route 86) was connected right through to the city centre. In 1913 the Northcote South Ratepayer's Association gained permission to install two redundant 12 ton cannons from the 1880s facing south to North Fitzroy (built by W.G. Armstrong and Co. of Newcastle-on-Tyne, UK) and they are still in place. The present commercial and shopping strip along High St. dates to the early 20th century, and Westgarth Primary School to 1925, when it opened as Westgarth Central School. The suburb won its present name between 1906 and 1910, with the decision to name the railway station after William Westgarth. The art nouveau Westgarth Theatre, the suburb's best-known landmark, opened in 1920.
  The 1960s and 1970s saw an influx of southern European immigrants to the area, in common with other City of Darebin suburbs. By the 1970s the Westgarth Theatre catered largely to a Greek-speaking cinema audience. Westgarth school photos and class lists from the 1970s are dominated by Greek names and faces. That influence began to fade in the 1980s, with the arrival of a new generation of Westgarth residents with higher incomes and education levels. The process of gentrification accelerated through the 1990s, fuelled by the suburb's central location, attractive streets and housing stock, and its proximity to pricier inner-city suburbs including Fitzroy, Clifton Hill and North Fitzroy. The Westgarth Theatre became an art-house movie venue in 1986 when the Valhalla Cinema relocated there after the demolition of its original premises in Richmond. Ten years later, it became the Westgarth Cinema, now part of the Palace Group. A number of industrial buildings along High St. were converted to residential use in the late 1990s and early first decade of the 21st century. Westgarth Primary School's original building was demolished in 1990 and replaced by an open-plan building, extended in 2011.
caption: Westgarth High Street, 2004; pavements were changed to black asphalt in 2006
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "SONY", "Image Model": "DSC-P52", "Image DateTime": "2004:11:05 20:20:11", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "192", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 50, 53, 48, 0, 0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0]", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/160", "EXIF FNumber": "19/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2004:11:05 20:20:11", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2004:11:05 20:20:11", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "31/8", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "51/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1632", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1224", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}