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John Street
John Street Fremantle
There was a John Street in Fremantle next to the Prison. It's now called Fothergill Street. It was to continue as Broome Street but is now Stack Street. It is not on record for which John the street was first named.
John Street North Fremantle
John Street, North Fremantle, was so named because it was associated with the land granted to John Bruce, commander of the Enrolled Pensioner Force. It ran along the SE edge of his 20-acre Lot 130 which was all the land between John Street, Harvest Road, the Perth Road (Stirling Hwy) and the river. It was called John Road at one time.
It is somewhat confusing that the present Tydeman Road was also called John Street, although it was originally named Pensioner Road, and then John Street after that.
Heritage Council:
John Street was the main road surveyed through the parcel of land granted to Lt. Con. [Lt Col.?] John Bruce in 1857 [Hitchcock has 1851]. The land remained undivided and undeveloped until after John Bruce's death, when his widow arranged for it to be auctioned as residential lots. A land sale was held in October 1890 to dispose of the estate of John Bruce. A large attendance resulted in all 88 lots being sold, for sums ranging from £21 to £102, at an average price of £33/16/0, well above the anticipated price. Towards the end of 1891, the new owners approached the Fremantle Council requesting that scrub be cleared so that they could access their blocks, and it is likely that this is when John Street, which had been marked on survey diagrams from at least 1833, was actually created. The area at this time was known as 'Brucetown'. Pensioner Road, which ran from Stirling Highway (then Bruce Street) to the ocean and beach along the route of current Tydeman Road between Stirling Highway and the railway, and continuing beyond this point at the same angle, was renamed John Street in the late 1890s, being the continuation of the current John Street. This name remained until towards the end of the twentieth century, when roads were realigned to accommodate the expansion of Fremantle Port, and the current alignment of Tydeman Road was constructed.
The present John Street, from Stirling Highway to the Swan River, developed as a predominantly residential area, with the exception of the Gresham Hotel (to 1934) and the North Fremantle Oval (later Gilbert Fraser Reserve). At the western end of the street a number of prominent homes were built, while the eastern end was characterised by workers cottages. Long residential blocks on the south side of the street, east of the oval, had a number of cottages built along their rear boundary, facing the water. These were reported to have flooded frequently. The street overall fell into disrepair in the decades following World War Two, with many of the larger residences used as boarding houses and the cottages rented out. Many German and Polish migrants took up residence in this period. From the 1980s, gentrification of the area began, with older places either being restored or demolished to construct higher density housing. In the 1990s, most of the older houses at the eastern end of the street were demolished to allow for new waterside developments, most notably Pier 21. Heritage Council[1] (see the 'History' section)
References and Links
Campbell, R.McK. 2017, Henderson & Company, privately published in association with the School of Design, UWA.
Heritage Council. And also Heritage Council.
Hitchcock, JK 1929, The History of Fremantle, The Front Gate of Australia 1829-1929, Fremantle City Council.
Note about the saving of the eastern part of the street in Fremantle, the newsletter of the Fremantle Society: Vol 3 No 2 1975.
Photo of an old John Street house, probably 37, in Fremantle, the newsletter of the Fremantle Society: Vol 5 No 1 1977.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 27 April, 2016 and hosted at freotopia.org/streets/john.html (it was last updated on 18 November, 2023), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.