St James is almost wholly residential, with a small commercial strip along Albany Highway and scattered businesses elsewhere. Boundary Road defines the boundary between the City of Canning and Town of Victoria Park and is the main east-west thoroughfare in the suburb. The main north-south counterparts are Albany Highway in the east and Berwick Street/Chapman Road in the west.
Name
The name "St James Park" was proposed by the Canning Road Board in 1939 for the area bounded by Boundary Road, Albany Highway, Welshpool Road, the Armadale railway line, Ewing Street, Bedford Park, and Taree Street. It was apparently named after St James's Park in London. The name was initially rejected by the state government's Nomenclature Committee, as it had no historical significance to Western Australia. However, it remained in local use and in 1957 the northern portion of Bentley was officially gazetted as the new suburb of St James.[2]
A number of streets in the suburb are named after notable UK Prime Ministers and Members of Parliament (including Palmerston, Walpole and Pitt Streets).[3]
History
Prior to European settlement, St James was occupied by the Beeloo subgroup of the Noongar people. Until World War II, most of St James was vacant bushland with some portions used for agricultural purposes. In the post-war period a significant amount of public housing was built by the State Housing Commission in St James and Bentley. Hundreds of blocks were also made available to war veterans by the War Service Homes Commission.[2]
In the 1990s the State Housing Commission began a process of redeveloping its public housing assets in St James and neighbouring suburbs, with the homes built in the 1950s demolished and either sold to private owners as vacant lots or rebuilt at higher densities.[4]
