The largest of Regina's inner city neighbourhoods, it was originally established in the mid-1880s to accommodate European labourers working on the Canadian Pacific Railway. It subsequently became a prosperous middle class precinct. By way of example, St Andrew's Presbyterian, later United Church — originally a mission congregation of Knox Presbyterian, like Carmichael Presbyterian to the south of Germantown and Lakeview United Church to the south of Wascana Creek — thrived from its founding in 1907 in the 2700 block, Dewdney Avenue through the building of an impressive though austere large church at Dewdney and Athol in 1951, the vitality and prosperity of the United Church and of WASPs in North Central demonstrated by the mortgage on the new building being retired after only four years in 1955 until North Central's changing demographic and the congregation's drastically waning numbers forced it to close at the turn of the 21st century.