The name recalls the ‘Spitalau’, riverside meadows owned by the city hospital.
In the 14th century this stretch of Danube meadows (‘Au’) passed to the Wiener Bürgerspital, the citizens’ hospital, which used it for wood – hence Spittelau, or Obere Spitalau. It was still an island in the 17th century. During the plague of 1713/1714 a quarantine station with wooden huts stood here; around 1800 the channel to the mainland was left to silt up and the island disappeared.