It acquired a cosmopolitan and politically progressive feel, and was one of the first identifiable gay and lesbian areas in urban South Africa.

However, due to the mass growth of the population of poor and unemployed people after the end of Apartheid, crime soared and the streets became strewn with rubbish.

[3] This, together with lack of investment and fear led to an exodus of middle-class residents in the 1980s and the decay of major buildings, leaving in its wake an urban slum by the 1990s.

[4] Today, the majority of the residents are incoming migrants from the townships, rural areas and the rest of Africa, many living in abject poverty.

Prior to the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand in 1886, the suburb laid on government owned land called Randjeslaagte that now makes up the Johannesburg CBD.

The origin of its name is simple, the suburb lies on the brow of the east west mountain ridge that crosses the Johannesburg CBD.

The West German embassy in South Africa issued a statement deploring the salute, blaming “irresponsible youths who were too young to experience Nazism” for celebrating the regime.

[14] A South African branch of the British neo-fascist National Front was established in 1978 and spread anti-semitic and racist pamphlets about Jewish landlords renting to non-white tenants in the suburb.

Architect Harold Le Roith sought to "green" the neighbourhood by introducing pavement gardens and planting to Golden Oaks, an apartment building he designed in 1976.

The building, a residential hotel, had been designed by Harold Le Roith and featured in Britain's influential The Architectural Review magazine in 1953.

The gay community was strong and large enough in Hillbrow that the conservative ruling National Party, which instituted apartheid, fielded a pro-gay rights candidate, Leon de Beer, in the 1987 elections.

[23][24] In 1990, one of the first training and information centres for HIV in South Africa was established in Hillbrow, initially catering mainly to white gay men.

As the racial demographic in Hillbrow radically shifted, so too did the people in need of HIV-related care, and by the late 1990s the clinics mainly worked with black heterosexual women.

In 1993 they moved to two adjacent premises on 60 Olivia Road (at the foot of the Hillbrow Tower) where the organization had The House Drop-in Centre and Intombi Shelter.

The building was placed under new management in 1999, and with regular maintenance reinstated and gradual restoration, coupled with council, provincial, and government initiatives to rehabilitate Hillbrow, it began to find some shine again.

In February 2007, Danny Boyle, the British director of Trainspotting, announced plans to use the building as a film set in a future release.

[25] In 2000, Michael Hammon and Jacqueline Görgen directed a documentary named Hillbrow Kids, depicting the struggles of a group of street children in post-apartheid urban South Africa.

They included "Holdup in Hillbrow, Johannesburg, November 1963", depicting a small white child with a toy gun playing with a black man.