The municipality was proclaimed on 17 April 1860 and, with an area of 1.7 square kilometres, included the entire suburb of Paddington and parts of Edgecliff.

[4] In 1889, at the urging of alderman and mayor, Charles Hellmrich, land was acquired on Oxford Street adjoining Victoria Barracks, for a new Town Hall.

[5] In early 1890, a design by architect John Edward Kemp was chosen and on 8 November 1890, the foundation stone was laid by Premier Sir Henry Parkes.

[10] By the end of the Second World War, the NSW Government had realised that its ideas of infrastructure expansion could not be realised by the present system of the mostly-poor inner-city municipal councils and the Minister for Local Government, Joseph Cahill, passed a bill in 1948 that abolished a significant number of those councils.

Under the Local Government (Areas) Act 1948, Paddington Municipal Council was merged with the larger neighbouring City of Sydney which was located immediately to the west, becoming the Paddington Ward, returning two aldermen, the penultimate and final mayors, Frank Green and Walter Farley Read.