On January 1, 2002 it joined with Côte-Saint-Luc and Montréal-Ouest as a borough of the City of Montreal.
The Town of Hampstead was founded in 1914. It was designed to be an exclusive garden city. Houses were assigned generous lots to allow maximum space for trees and shrubery. The town's roads were placed on a gradual curve, to escape the impersonal feeling of the grid-iron street layout common in the City of Montreal. The town was named after another garden city, the London suburb of Hampstead Village.
Until the 1950s, only Protestants were allowed to live or own property in Hampstead. Today only 4% of the population are Protestant compared to a national average of 38%, wheras 84% are Jewish compared to a national average of 1.2%.