Simmering remained small until 1860, when the Rinnböckhäuser housing development was built, which at the time was the second-largest in Vienna, and resulted in rapid growth in the area.

Kaiserebersdorf (earlier known as Ebersdorf) was one of the original villages in the district and held the residence of the Ebendorfer dynasty.

On January 1, 1892, Simmering, Kaiserebersdorf, and some very small parts of Kledering, Schwechat, and Albern were incorporated into Vienna as the 11th district.

But after World War II, it was moved to the 2nd district Leopoldstadt so that its refineries would belong to the Soviet-occupied quarter of Vienna.

The rearing unicorn on a golden background stands for Kaiserebersdorf and comes from the coat of arms of the Herr von Hintperg-Ebersdorf, who founded the settlement.

In 2005, the SPÖ improved their result slightly to 60.7%, before losing the absolute majority with a loss of 11% at the following election in 2010, finishing with 49.2% of the vote.

There were huge 70-meter tall gas tanks on the premises, called the Gasometer (featured in the James Bond film The Living Daylights).

Reconstruction in 2001 converted the structures from containers to buildings that today house apartments, offices, a shopping centre, and a cinema.

Simmering is home to many large undeveloped stretches of greenery and fields full of vegetable gardens that provide produce for the city.

Prior to her death, Russian-American cultural theorist Svetlana Boym worked on the short film Remembering Forgetting based on her time at the transit refugee camp for Jewish emigrants from the Soviet Union in 1981, for which she interviewed Schukoff and other Jewish intellectuals who stayed at the camp.