In 1897 an investor named Herman Tobiansky bought 237 acres of land four and a half miles (about seven kilometres) west of Johannesburg intending to develop an attractive white suburb on the site. He named the suburb after his wife, Sophia and the streets after his children. The Johannesburg Town Council, however, successfully destroyed Tobiansky's dream when they decided to build sewerage disposal facilities in an area next to the township and whites lost interest in buying property there.

Though the Sophiatown Tobiansky had dreamed of was not to be, in its place grew another Sophiatown - a colourful, vibrant, violent and sometimes sordid place that was to become both a name linked with a flourishing period of creativity in writing, music and politics, and a powerful metaphor for the destruction brought about by the Nationalist Government's policy of ‘separate development’.

The Council itself began to develop property to the west of Johannesburg. Its first move was to build a new municipal location for three thousand families which was called Western Native Township. Now Tobiansky5s Sophiatown was surrounded by a ‘non-European' area and Tobiansky began to sell plots in the township to blacks, coloureds and Indians.