Westend is situated west of Berlin's inner city on Spandauer Berg, the northern peak of the sandy Teltow plateau between the river valleys of Spree and Havel.

When upon the 1806 Battle of Jena–Auerstedt victorious Napoleon moved into Berlin, he had a military camp set up on Spandauer Berg, though he himself chose nearby Charlottenburg Palace for accommodation.

The beginnings, overshadowed by the Austro-Prussian War, were quite modest and the first land settlement company around the Stettin merchant Johannes Quistorp and architect Martin Gropius collapsed in the Panic of 1873.

Nevertheless, the development was boosted by Berlin's population pressure after the unification of Germany and similar to other mansion colonies such as Lichterfelde West or Grunewald, most of the premises were overbuilt by the end of the century.

On 8 June 1913, the Deutsches Stadion was inaugurated in the northern Grunewald forest, designated as venue of the 1916 Summer Olympics that were never held due to World War I and later rebuilt as Olympiastation.