Beaufort Street history and heritage

Walk Beaufort Street with an eye for detail and you can read more than a century of Perth history in its parapets, verandahs and shopfronts. This hub summarises the street’s story and links to our in-depth heritage guides.

Before the street

The land Beaufort Street crosses lies within a chain of seasonal wetlands that were, and remain, important to the Whadjuk Noongar people. The City of Vincent notes two registered Aboriginal heritage sites near Highgate: Yoordogoorading (Stone’s Lake, now the site of Perth Oval) and Boodjamooling (Hyde Park). Colonist James Kennedy later recalled seeing hundreds of Noongar people camped at the Third Swamp, now Hyde Park, in the 1850s and 1860s. After colonisation most of these wetlands were drained or filled.

Gold-rush boom

The 1890s gold rushes transformed Perth. Rural land close to the city was subdivided for housing. In Highgate, the Mount Heart Estate was released in 1892, centred on land that became a Catholic precinct around the Sacred Heart Church. Schools, a police station (1897) and a synagogue (1897) followed. According to the City of Vincent, the Queens Hotel was built in 1897 as a private residence for boot manufacturer John Andew Gent and leased as a hotel from 1898. Third Swamp, which had been used as a tent city for gold-rush arrivals, was gazetted as a public park in 1897 and became Hyde Park.

The tram street

In 1900 the Perth Electric Tramway extended along Beaufort Street, and commercial strips quickly followed. By 1905, the section between Chatsworth and Mary streets had a chemist, baker, bookseller, draper, butcher, bootmaker and more. In Mount Lawley, proclaimed in 1901, developers extended the tram along Walcott Street and sold off the estates that became today’s leafy streets.

Between the wars

The 1930s brought Art Deco to the street. The Lyceum Theatre, built in 1914–15, was remodelled in 1939 and renamed the Astor in 1941. Flats such as the Waihemo Flats at 686 Beaufort Street, and commercial buildings like the 1934 Clarke Building at 639 Beaufort Street, gave Mount Lawley its Deco character. Read the Astor Theatre guide.

Post-war change

After the Second World War, migrants from Italy, Greece, Croatia, Poland and elsewhere settled in Highgate and Mount Lawley. Beaufort Street was lined with corner stores, furniture makers, garages and workshops. Car culture and suburban shopping centres hit small traders, and television hit cinemas. The Astor declined and, by the late 1970s and 1980s, faced demolition.

Revival

The refurbishment of the Queens Hotel in 1986 and the restoration of the Astor in 1989 helped reinvent Beaufort Street as a café and restaurant precinct. In 2009 the Beaufort Street Network, described by the City of Vincent as Western Australia’s first “town team”, formed to promote the street, and it ran the Beaufort Street Festival from 2010. Read our festival history.

Heritage guides

• Heritage buildings of Beaufort Street
• The Astor Theatre
• Hyde Park
• The Beaufort Street Festival

Researching further

The City of Vincent Local History Centre in Leederville holds photographs, maps and oral histories, and its online image gallery is a treasure trove. The State Heritage Office’s inHerit database lists heritage places with detailed documentation. Trove, the National Library’s digitised newspapers, records the street’s day-to-day history.

Researching further

The City of Vincent Library & Local History Centre in Leederville and the City of Stirling Art and History Collection hold photographs, maps and records of the Beaufort Street suburbs. The State Library of Western Australia and Trove are good places to search for newspapers and images.