Leederville history: from Galup to Oxford Street

Leederville’s town centre, its hotels and its picture theatre all date from a burst of growth between the 1890s and the 1920s, built on land that had been a meeting place long before.

How Leederville got its name

The suburb is named after William Leeder, who arrived in the Swan River Colony in 1830 and was granted land around the lake now known again as Galup.

Before the suburb

The City of Vincent records that to the Whadjuk Noongar, Galup meant place of fires. It was used for gathering food, camping, meetings and ceremonies under the leadership of Yellagonga.

In 1832 the colonial government set up a food depot at the lake, and John Henry Monger took up land next to it, which is how the lake came to be called Lake Monger. Convict labour later drained wetlands for market gardens, dairies and poultry farms, and Chinese market gardens operated on Oxford Street around 1919.

How it grew

The Fremantle to Guildford railway (1881) and the gold boom of the 1890s brought the first estates: Leeder Estate, Lake View Estate and Leederville Station Estate. Leederville became a roads board district in 1895 and a municipality in 1896, and in 1914 it merged with Perth and North Perth.

Trams arrived from 1900, and the lake became a public reserve in the early 1900s. A technical school opened in 1948, later Leederville TAFE. In 1973 the Mitchell Freeway divided the suburb, and Leederville Station opened in the early 1990s.

Places that tell the story

The Leederville Hotel on Newcastle Street was built in 1897, bought by the Swan Brewery in 1914 and altered in 1928. It has long been a meeting place for crowds from nearby Leederville Oval.

The Oxford Hotel on Oxford Street was built between 1900 and 1904.

The New Oxford Theatre, now Luna Leederville, opened on 2 March 1927 to a crowd of 1,286. It was designed by S. B. Rosenthal and is said to have been the first suburban theatre to install sound.

The primary school (1894), post office (1897), police station (1898) and St Mary’s Church (1923) mark the suburb’s early civic life.

Leederville today

Leederville is in the City of Vincent, created when the City of Perth was split in 1994. In 2025 Lake Monger was officially renamed Galup.

More about Leederville

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

Sources

• City of Vincent: Leederville history
• inHerit: Lake Monger
• inHerit: Leederville Hotel
• inHerit: Oxford Hotel
• inHerit: New Oxford Theatre
• Town of Cambridge: Galup renaming

Top image: Luna Leederville, the former New Oxford Theatre. Photo: Greg O'Beirne, CC BY 2.5, 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