At the time, the area was part of the District of South Vancouver and consisted mostly of farmland alongside a cluster of homes.

[2] Extensive logging took place along the south slope of Vancouver during the late 19th into early 20th century, prompting communities such as Sunset to rapidly industrialize.

The neighbourhood remained quite rural until the 1940s, when a large wave immigrants from central and eastern Europe moved into the area.

[6] Primarily Sikhs from the Punjab region of South Asia, the new immigrants founded the Punjabi Market (Little India) on Main Street and presided over the last final large scale development in the neighbourhood with the construction of hundreds of Vancouver Specials.

The Sunset neighborhood was dominated by bungalow homes constructed in the 1960s and 1970s; however, in the last 10 years, many of these smaller houses have been torn down and have been replaced by larger multi-level residences.