The Sandringham shopping centre development started with Warings Corner around 1915, this is the building which the Ray White office now partly occupies. The walk commences in the shopping centre and takes you north along Sandringham Road, once known as Cabbage Tree Swamp Road until 1877, and then all the way to Eden Park.

Whereas original crown grantees of land in the 1840's in Auckland  were usually merely speculation investors, in 1857 Henry Hardington purchased allotment 45, to the south-east of the Sandrigham area, and appears on a list of occupiers in 1862 petitioning for a special rate to improve the road. He sold his farm two years later but his presence indicates the begginnings of the period of European occupation of this part of the district. Another early land owner in the Sandringham area was Rev. French (b. 1828) who arrived in Auckland in 1858, and was the first master of the Mt Albert District School. In 1864 Rev. Alexander French, who owned a farm to Fowlds Avenue (including the site of Edendale School), purchased allotment 161, which covers part of the area of the present day shopping centre.

The Mt Albert Highway Board apparently placed one of their two toll gates at the corner of the Cabbage Tree Swamp Road and Page's origional wooden store on New North Road, to earn revenue for their road maintenance and construction budget. From the turn of the century the district came to be known as Edendale. This may have originated from the names given to the subdivision of the farms at the time, a number known as "Town of Edendale Extension." Kingsland Road became known as Edendale Road by c. 1912. The name Sandringham Road was used from the early 1930's.

The Sandringham area was described as desolate, strwen with boulders and flooded in parts almost all year round from Eden Park to the present Sandringham shopping centre. The area was mainly used for dairy farms and to provide road access over flooded areas a number of stone bridges were formed including Newbolds Bridge near Eden Park and Gribble's Bridge near Gribblehirst Park.

The subdivision of the larger farm allotments into residential sites and the formation of side streets off Sandringham Road in the areas of the shopping centre occurred between 1908 - 1910. The early pattern of origional allotments has resulted in the bend in Sandringham Road in the heart of the shopping centre.

The provision of the electric tram service along Sandringham Road was later than Dominion Road, which started in 1908, because a rail over-bridge had to be constructed near the junction with New North Road in Kingsland. The extension to the Sandringham shopping centre was completed by March 1925. The tram service was an important catalyst for further commercial development particularly during the 1920's, clustered around the intersection of Sandringham and Kitchener Roads. Surrounding residential development also increased and included a large number of state houses built in the area in the 1930's.

Throughout the 1920's to 1950's the shops catered for most of the everyday needs of surrounding residents and included butchers, bakers, fruiters, drapers, dairies, fishmongers, chemists and stationers. As the residential population in surrounding streets stedily increased the range of services provided in the shopping centre expanded to include the Mayfair Picture Thertre in 1929, the Sandringham Reserve in 1925, public toilets in 1930 and a purpose built Post Office in 1956.

The centre retains its early buildings including intact groups of one and two storied 1920's - 1940's buildings. A number of the buildings in Sandringham shopping centre have been designed by well-known architectural prectices such as A Sinclair O'Connor, Massey Hyland and Phillips and R A Abbott. The shopping centre has a number of good examples of the shop-with-dwelling type that was built in many commercial centres around this time.