It was proclaimed on 2 August 1883, when the area was separated from the District Council of Stepney due to differing interests between the rapidly-growing St Peters area, which contained five-eighths of the Stepney council's ratepayers, and slower-growing suburbs further east.
[1] It was divided into four wards (Hackney, East Adelaide, Stepney and Maylands), each represented by two councillors, alongside a directly elected mayor.
[2] The council initially met at the Bucks Head Hotel (later the Avenues Hotel), but rapidly sought a town hall due to a lack of office accommodation, and the St Peters Town Hall was built in 1885 at a cost of approximately £3,000, formally opening on 8 March 1886.
[3][4][5] The council undertook an important local role in social welfare during the Great Depression, and from the 1960s had to deal with planning issues surrounding the Playford government's Metropolitan Adelaide Transport Study, the Dunstan government's Hackney Redevelopment Scheme, and in the late 1970s and 1980s, the Adelaide O-Bahn, the latter which met local opposition over noise and its impact on the Torrens Gorge.
It also developed zoning regulations protecting the character of the local area as a "low and medium density house-and-garden town".