Old East York is a neigh­bour­hood in the city of Toronto located in the for­mer East York. While East York was a much larger area, the name has been kept as a reminder to the days before the mega city. There are mul­ti­ple def­i­n­i­tions of its extent, but at its largest Old East York has cov­ers the por­tion of the for­mer city south of Taylor-Massey Creek and the Don Val­ley Park­way. It thus stretches from the Don River in the west to Vic­to­ria Park Avenue in the east. The south­ern bor­der is the old bound­ary between East York and Toronto.

The area is pri­mar­ily made up of sin­gle detached homes and own­er­ship is well above aver­age (at over 65%). Most of the houses are small bun­ga­lows con­structed in the post-war era, but today many are being torn down and replaced by larger houses. The area is mid­dle class pri­mar­ily and while once dom­i­nated by seniors, many are mov­ing on and younger fam­i­lies are find­ing an afford­able neigh­bour­hood within fairly close prox­im­ity to the city centre.

Much of the cen­tral sec­tion of what became East York was first set aside as ‘Clergy Reserves’, called ‘Glebe land’, a hotly debated fea­ture of the orig­i­nal sys­tem of land grant­ing in Ontario which retained land for the use of the church. Argu­ments over which church should have the use of this land led to the even­tual sale of the clergy reserves, most of which had remained unde­vel­oped for many years as sur­round­ing areas were cleared and built on.

Old East York

The clergy lots between Don­lands (orig­i­nally a part of Leslie Street) and Wood­bine only began to be devel­oped after the con­struc­tion of the Prince Edward Viaduct and Leslie Bridge and suc­cess­ful devel­op­ment of the old Tod­mor­den postal vil­lage west of Don­lands as Pape Vil­lage.

To the north of O’Connor (which splices down the mid­dle of the neigh­bour­hood) is Tod­mor­den vil­lage. Much of the vil­lage lies atop the Don Val­ley Ravine which is lined with for­est. Mature trees are a big pres­ence in this area of the neigh­bour­hood and cre­ate an extremely peace­ful and nat­ural area, rarely found this close to down­town Toronto. Where Pape and the Don­lands head north past O’Connor is a gor­geous area con­sist­ing of very few streets and beau­ti­ful homes.

Wood­bine Heights is bounded by Coxwell on the West, Main on the East, the Don Val­ley Ravine on the north and Mil­ver­ton on the south. Its main foci are the “Olde East York Vil­lage”, located Coxwell Avenue, north of Mor­timer, and the Wood­bine Vil­lage, located along the Wood­bine north of Sammon.

Hous­ing stock in this area con­sists pri­mar­ily of single-family homes, and is typ­i­fied by dis­tinct, narrow-lot vari­ants of Dutch Colo­nial Revival and Eng­lish Cot­tage archi­tec­ture, built before 1920.. Until recently, this neigh­bor­hood was inhab­ited by many retirees. How­ever, it is increas­ingly pop­u­lated by young upper-middle-class fam­i­lies employed along Dan­forth and in Toronto’s downtown.

Cres­cent Town to the far east is a col­lec­tion of apart­ment tow­ers that acts as an immi­grant recep­tion area, pri­mar­ily for new immi­grants from South Asia.

Broad­view North is a neigh­bour­hood bor­dered by Pape Avenue to the East, Chester­hill to the South and the DVP to the west and north. The area is dom­i­nated by renters and high rise build­ings. There are numer­ous low income build­ings in the area, how­ever, rent­ing (at over 70%) is cer­tainly the norm in this area. How­ever at the very north the area con­tains many bun­ga­lows, many of which are being redone into 2-storey houses because of the decent area and the con­sid­er­ably low hous­ing price. The area has sig­nif­i­cant Greek and Ser­bian populations.

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Con­tact the Jef­frey Team for more infor­ma­tion – 416−388−1960

Lau­rin & Natalie Jef­frey are Toronto Real­tors with Cen­tury 21 Regal Realty.
They did not write these arti­cles, they just repro­duce them here for peo­ple
who are inter­ested in Toronto real estate. They do not work for any builders.
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