East Victoria Park history: trams, Albany Highway and Elizabeth Baillie

East Victoria Park grew along the tram line and Albany Highway, and much of its character comes from the decades either side of the Second World War.

Before the suburb

The Town of Victoria Park’s library timeline refers to the area as Beeloo country and to the river crossing at Heirisson Island, recorded as Matagarup, a place where the river is only leg deep.

How it grew

The Victoria Park district was gazetted in 1894 and became a municipality in 1897. The tram crossed the Causeway in 1905 and reached Mint Street later that year. East Victoria Park School opened in 1914, and the tram reached Patricia Street in 1934. Albany Road was renamed Albany Highway in 1940, and trams were replaced by buses in 1950.

An East Victoria Park post office officially opened in 1953, after an unofficial one had operated on Albany Road from 1927.

Places that tell the story

The Edward Millen Home on Hill View Terrace was built from 1912 as Elizabeth Baillie’s Rotunda maternity hospital and later served as a tuberculosis sanatorium. It is on the State Register, and the Town has renamed the site to honour Elizabeth Baillie, whom it describes as a pioneering midwife who built Western Australia’s first maternity hospital there in 1912.

The Balmoral Hotel on Albany Highway is an inter-war building on the Town’s draft heritage list.

East Victoria Park today

East Victoria Park is now a busy suburb of character houses, post-war houses and newer townhouses along Albany Highway.

More about East Victoria Park

For what East Victoria Park is like to live in now, read our East Victoria Park suburb profile. If you own a property in East Victoria Park and are thinking about selling, start with buyers for your property.

Sources

• Town of Victoria Park Library: local history timeline
• Historic Victoria Park: timeline
• inHerit: Edward Millen Home
• Town of Victoria Park: Elizabeth Baillie renaming
• Hughes-Hallett, Indigenous history of the Swan and Canning rivers (2010)

Top image: The Edward Millen Home, East Victoria Park, 2022. Photo: Calistemon, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Dates and names are drawn from the sources above. Where sources differ, we have said so or given an approximate date.

By Key Performance Real Estate, 338 Beaufort Street, Perth