Tag Archives: Beaconsfield Village
Brockton Village
Brockton Village, Little Portugal, the area in between Beaconsfield, Parkdale and Roncy… no matter what you call it, this area is on the verge of some serious gentrification. Bordered by Bloor Street on the north, Dufferin Street on the east, Landsdowne on the west and Queen Street to the south, Brockton was in fact an actual town before it was annexed by the City of Toronto in 1884.
The town encompassed the area from Bloor Street on the north, Dufferin Street on the east, High Park on the west and ranged from Queen Street, along Roncesvalles Avenue, Wright Avenue and Dundas Streets to the south. The section south of the rail lines became part of the Village of Parkdale. The section to the west of Lansdowne has become better known as Roncesvalles, around Roncesvalles Avenue.
Over the last half of the 20th century, the area south of College Street saw the influx of Portuguese immigrants and is also known as part of the Little Portugal neighbourhood. Today’s ‘Brockton Village’ encompasses that section north of the rail lines between Dufferin and Lansdowne, south of Bloor Street.
Brockton Village Real Estate Map
Long overlooked by home buyers and investors, Brockton homes are attracting more interest as the availability of affordable homes with easy access to downtown diminishes. Prices remain reasonable for first-home buyers — particularly for those prepared to invest in some updating of an older home, in preference to a newer suburban home with lengthy commute into the city.
Tall and skinny are what comes to mind when thinking of homes in Brockton Village. Neatly aligned Victorian rowhouses and semis are de rigeur, many with reach-to-the-sky pointed third-storey rooflines. There is a certain warmth to the homes in Brockton, with colourful painted brick and pillared verandas from a century ago greeting you to the neighbourhood.
The traditionally modest and overlooked homes of Brockton are attracting more interest these days, as the stock of affordable homes close to downtown diminishes. Home buyers appreciate Brockton’s easy access to the downtown core, both by driving and via the Bloor Subway.
Brockton Village Homes
First-time homebuyers are looking to Brockton for its reasonable house prices. In addition, homebuyers are increasingly willing to invest a bit of effort to update older homes with character, instead of buying newer homes in the suburbs that require an ever-increasing commute into Toronto.
Overall, Brockton Village’s affordable homes and convenient location make it a highly desirable community in which to live. Though the neighbourhood is now more culturally diverse, there is still a very strong Portuguese influence, as witnessed by the local food shops and the annual Portugal Week Parade along Rua Acores.
First settled by Irish immigrants in the early 1800s, Brockton was incorporated as a village in 1881 and amalgamated with Toronto in 1884. Today, this quiet, unassuming west downtown neighbourhood encompasses the area from High Park in the west to Dufferin Street in the east, and south from Bloor Street West along Queen Street, Roncesvalles Avenue and Dundas Street.
Dundas West and Brock Avenue
Brockton Village got its name from Brock Avenue which was commissioned The Brock Family and built in 1850. They sold off parcels of land for the purpose of development. It gained the moniker “Brockton” over time and the area was ultimately annexed by Toronto City.
Today, remnants of the former Brockton still exist, including its former town hall. The hall was converted to commercial usage, and is located at the south-west corner of Dundas Street West and Brock Avenue. Until recently, there was a Brockton High School, which closed. For a time it was used by the Royal Conservatory of Music but it is now vacant. It is located at Brock Avenue and Croatia Street, near Bloor Street.
Easy access to the mid-town and downtown commercial and entertainment districts and workplaces of the city — by car or by public transport — is another reason for considering Brockton Village homes.
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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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Trinity Bellwoods
Trinity Bellwoods is easily the neighbourhood with the highest concentration of asymmetrical haircuts and skinny jeans in the city. With the explosion of bars and restaurants on Ossington, the impossibly hip factor has reached new, often unaffordable, heights. Known for its Victorian and Edwardian homes, the area’s not immune to the city’s construction boom with infill town home and condo projects popping up along Manning Avenue, Ossington and Dundas.
Trinity Bellwoods is a well-recognized part of Toronto. Surrounded by four streets; Bathurst Street on the east, College Street on the north, Queen Street West on the south and Dovercourt Road to the west. Surrounding neighbourhoods include: Beaconsfield Village, Kensington, Niagara, Roncesvalles and Little Italy.
Artists can be found walking their dogs in the neighbourhood’s namesake park, a grand and gated 37-acre oasis. While there are still relatively large Brazilian, Portuguese and Italian communities closer to Dundas and College (Portugal Day draws multitudes in June), it’s the park and Queen West that typify the area. Plenty of art galleries, bookstores, bars and boutiques draw a huge amount of foot traffic – and effortlessly stylish cyclists on parade – each weekend.
Trinity Bellwoods Real Estate Map
For many decades, Queen Street West was known as the home of Toronto’s artistic community. This trend however began to change in the 1980s. At that time, a local TV station (CHUM – now Bell Media via CTV through some mergers and acquisitions) bought the ornate building at 299 Queen West (the 1913 headquarters of the Methodist Church of Canada – note the lack of religious decoration) and the area started to get trendy.
This, in turn, came with much higher rents in the area and many of the artists were driven out because of the high cost of living. Before 1981, gentrification was almost non-existent and one could still find a good assortment of book stores that were lined with other kinds of funky stores. Lots of artwork filled these stores, both outside and inside and it truly reflected the arts community of the time.
Today, the street is very popular, but for different reasons with the moving of the artists and store owners. Other neighborhoods surrounding the Queen Street West area include the Liberty Village and the Beaconsfield Village. These neighborhoods have Victorian style homes and offer Queen Street West residents shopping destinations as well as recreation.
Houses by Trinity Bellwoods Park
The Trinity Bellwoods area along Ossington Avenue slightly north of Queen Street has changed tremendously in the last years. While it previously consisted of sports bars and social clubs, it is now booming with hip restaurants, bars and cafes. Some say these changes have occurred because of the Trinity Belllwoods real estate rent increase along Queen Street compared to the Ossington Avenue buildings.
The name originated from Trinity Bellwoods Park, which was developed around the former Garrison Creek ravine. One of the reasons Trinity Bellwoods real estate is popular is because on the north and south sides the park is conveniently reachable from main pedestrian and bicycling pathways. The east and west sides of the park are bordered by lovely, peaceful residential streets. The park offers much for the community including tennis courts, playgrounds, a hockey rink, dog walking area, shade trees, picnic benches and tables, greenhouse, community center and a public swimming pool. The northwest area of the park has a farmer’s market every Tuesday afternoon except during the winter months.
This park was the first site of the Trinity College that was built in 1852. It was erected nearly at the centre of the park, where it remained for the next 100 years or so. Currently, there is nothing left of the college except for the restored gates at the southern entrance of the park. By 1900, the college and its charming environment helped to develop Trinity Bellwoods real estate residential community. Some of the neighbourhood is still home to many tall, narrow houses of Bay-and-gable or Gothic Revival designs from the era.
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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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Incoming search terms
Dufferin Grove
Many neighbourhoods in the city are simply collections of streets, with no real centre. Dufferin Grove, with its namesake park, is an exception. The park istself has become a focal point for this very local-minded neighbourhood – and has given rise to a wide range of neighbourly actvities including potluck suppers, year-round farmers’ markets and a communal outdoor oven. There’s even Wi-Fi in the park for afternoon bench surfing!
Dufferin Grove is a popular family oriented neighbourhood located close to downtown Toronto. This neighbourhood has excellent amenities including a popular community park, a shopping centre, excellent schools and and convenient access to public transit.
Dufferin Grove Real Estate Map
Dufferin Grove Park has received lots of media attention in the past for its pivotal role in revitalizing the Dufferin Grove neighbourhood. Creating a centre for the neighbourhood, the park generates a strong sense of community among area residents. This park has become a community centre without any walls – so popular that local residents affectionately refer to it as their Big Backyard.
A natural extension of that community mindset, the Grove Community School opened in 2009 and touts a curriculum based on social justice and the environment. Some of the local schools such as Kent School on Dufferin fit in with the architectural motif. Others, such as Dewson Street Junior Public School have more of a modernist feel to them. The Bloor and Gladsone branch of the Toronto Library was recently renoivated and makes for a lovely addition to the Bloor streetscape.
Dufferin Grove Park
The neighbourhood stretches from Bloor to Dundas, but Bloor is usually considered part of Dovercourt Park to the north, and Dundas is usually attached more to Little Portugal/Beaconsfield Village to the south, so College ends up being the main retail strip of the Dufferin Grove neighbourhood. It is not the most vibrant section of College, with most of the Little Italy panache petering out after Ossington. It can, however hold its own with a mix of residential buildings and eclectic shops.
Pretty streets such as Rusholme offer an impressive degree of serenity and boast a surprisingly high number of detached homes so close to the city core. The neighbourhood is fairly family-heavy, and Portuguese remains the dominant language in some areas. Brockton Village, which occupies the western half of the district, draws artists with its affordable real estate prices.
Dufferin Grove Real Estate
Some local churches have been converted to lofts, namely the Centennial Methodist Church at 701 Dovercourt, with the Anglican church of St. Mary the Virgin and St. Cyprian at 40 Westmoreland on its 3rd attempt. There are even lofts carved out of the hall attached to Dovercourt-St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church on Hepbourne Street – where Conn Smythe taught Sunday school!
The majority of Dufferin Grove houses were built between 1890 and 1930. Dufferin Grove’s semi-detached and detached houses are larger than those found in many other downtown Toronto neighbourhoods. The architectural style of the homes in Dufferin Grove range from early and late Victorian to Edwardian and English Cottage style designs. Expect to see a lot of newer brick homes, many from the 1970s-1990s.
On the western side of Duffrin Grove, Sterling Road is home to many industrial buildings, some of which have been converted into furniture stores, play space for sporting clubs – including the Toronto Backyard Axe Throwing League. The lands around the railway tracks, stretching all the way past Bloor Street and the neighbourhood boundaries, could see big changes in coming years. Developers are floating plans to turn the old Tower Automotive grounds into a mixed-use neighborhood much like the Distillery District or Liberty Village.
The Dufferin Grove area was first settled by the Denison Family, who emigrated to Canada from England in 1792. The Denisons were active participants in Toronto’s early military and political affairs. Their country villas were Toronto landmarks, that had titles such as “Dover Court”, “Rush Holme” and “Heydon Villa” – giving their names to many local streets.
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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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