For­est Hill is one of the most exclu­sive neigh­bour­hoods in cen­tral Toronto. Along with Lawrence Park, Rosedale and The Bri­dle Path, it is one of Toronto’s wealth­i­est neigh­bour­hoods. For­est Hill, like Rosedale, is con­sid­ered one of the finest and most promi­nent neigh­bour­hoods in Toronto. While the for­est has long been replaced by lux­ury res­i­dences, the neigh­bour­hood, with its rolling land­scape, remains one of the pret­ti­est and most appeal­ing places to live in Toronto.

Vis­i­tors to For­est Hill are usu­ally greeted by the Upper Canada Col­lege clock tower on Avenue Road. Upper For­est Hill Vil­lage is dom­i­nated by Tudor and Geor­gian style homes, but the archi­tec­tural styles range from French Colo­nial with terra cotta tiles to Eng­lish coun­try manors with sweep­ing lawns. Lux­u­ri­ous details such as sculp­ture gar­dens, porte-cochères, and impos­ing gated entrances are com­mon and quite wide­spread. For­est Hill also con­tains a fair num­ber of his­toric lux­ury con­dos and co-ops located west of Spad­ina on Lons­dale Road.

For­est Hill Map

Within For­est Hill is a smaller com­mu­nity known to locals as Cedar­vale. Homes in Cedar­vale are slightly smaller than those in For­est Hill, and the ravine that cuts through the neigh­bour­hood is a source of local pride.

Notable insti­tu­tions located in For­est Hill are the local Montes­sori School, Upper Canada Col­lege, the Bishop Stra­chan School, and For­est Hill Pub­lic Library. There are numer­ous churches and syn­a­gogues and two theatres.

For­est Hill was orig­i­nally incor­po­rated as a vil­lage in 1923, and later annexed by the City of Toronto in 1967, along with the Vil­lage of Swansea. The vil­lage was named after the sum­mer home of John Wick­son; pre­vi­ously it had been known as Spad­ina Heights (a name that con­tin­ued to be applied to the neigh­bour­hood into the twen­ti­eth cen­tury). Spad­ina Heights is a deriv­a­tive of the Ojibwe word “isha­pade­nah”, mean­ing a hill or sud­den rise in land. Oddly enough, the his­tor­i­cally accu­rate pro­nun­ci­a­tion is “Spad-dee-na”, though time has changed the way we say it to the cur­rent “Spa-die-na”.

In the late 1960s, the City of Toronto planned to con­struct a high­way that would run from High­way 401 to down­town Toronto via the Cedar­vale Ravine and Spad­ina Road. For­est Hill and the Annex would be bisected by the pro­posed route and numer­ous local houses would be sac­ri­ficed for the new express­way. Jane Jacobs led local res­i­dents to rise to protest and raise the aware­ness of the greater pub­lic. The provin­cial gov­ern­ment was forced to with­draw its sup­port for the so-called Spad­ina Express­way in 1971. The upper half of this route remains today as the Allen Expressway.

When For­est Hill was annexed by the City of Toronto, the agree­ment granted local res­i­dents the right to have their garbage picked up from their doorstep rather than from the curb. It wasn’t until 1993 that the pub­lic learned that this extra ser­vice cost $420,000 a year and was paid for by the munic­i­pal gov­ern­ment and pub­lic opin­ion of other Toron­to­ni­ans forced the city to dis­con­tinue this favour to For­est Hill residents

For­est Hill Village

The neighbourhood’s orig­i­nal bound­aries were Bathurst Street to the west, Upper Canada Col­lege to the east, Eglin­ton Avenue to the north, and Lons­dale Road and a por­tion of Mont­clair Avenue to the south. Neigh­bour­hoods north of Eglin­ton are some­times though not unan­i­mously regarded as For­est Hill.

In 1999 Robert Ful­ford com­pared For­est Hill to Rosedale, the other tra­di­tional home of Toronto’s elite: “While Rosedale has remained sta­ble for half a cen­tury, For­est Hill’s pres­tige has been grow­ing steadily. There’s a key tonal dif­fer­ence in the archi­tec­ture of the two places: where big Rosedale houses shout ‘his­tory,’ big For­est Hill houses shout ‘grandeur.’ More than any other dis­trict in the cen­tral city, For­est Hill has become the site of spec­tac­u­lar new ‘neo-traditional’ homes built on a grand scale, usu­ally with lawns to match.”

For­est Hill Vil­lage is a part of For­est Hill occu­py­ing most of the orig­i­nal area of the vil­lage and extends roughly from Briar Hill Avenue in the north (the Upper Vil­lage, offi­cially part of For­est Hill North) to Heath Street in the south (the Lower Vil­lage, offi­cially the major part of For­est Hill South) along Spad­ina Road between Bathurst Street/Cedarvale Ravine (whichever is fur­ther east) and Avenue Road. The des­ig­na­tions Upper and Lower are sim­ply based on land height and not on posi­tions on a map or along a watercourse.

The Lower Vil­lage was com­pletely devel­oped by the 1930s and is known for its upscale shop­ping and din­ing, although the actual mix of stores includes sev­eral mod­est enter­prises. The Lower Vil­lage has attracted exten­sive res­i­den­tial devel­op­ment (espe­cially of apart­ments), both within the orig­i­nal bound­aries of For­est Hill and in adja­cent neigh­bour­hoods to which devel­op­ers have now extended the Vil­lage and For­est Hill names.

The Upper Vil­lage was slower to develop due to the fact it had pre­vi­ously been occu­pied by the old Belt Line Rail­way, and then by indus­try. Its houses were built mostly in the 1940s and 50′s. Many homes have been sig­nif­i­cantly ren­o­vated, with some being torn down com­pletely to make way for newer “mon­ster” homes.

For­est Hill Real Estate

For­est Hill North extends from Briar Hill Avenue in the north to Eglin­ton Avenue West in the south, and from Latimer Avenue in the east to Allen Road and Mar­lee Avenue in the north-west and south-west, respectively.

As the name would imply, For­est Hill South is directly south of For­est Hill North. It extends from Eglin­ton Ave West in the north to Tich­ester Road in the south, and from Bathurst Street in the west to Elm­sthorpe Road in the north­east and Avenue Road and the Ori­ole Park­way in the east. There is an addi­tional stretch of For­est Hill South between Bathurst Street and Spad­ina Road, north of Lons­dale Road.

The den­sity in For­est Hill is fairly low as com­posed of mainly low-density hous­ing. The hous­ing is pre­dom­i­nantly detached houses with sev­eral semi-detached and town homes. Although it is mainly low-density hous­ing, the lots are not as large as the ones found in the sub­urbs. For­est Hill detached homes are mostly on smaller lots with the houses close to each other. Higher-density and mixed uses are found at the major roads and nodes of the neigh­bour­hood mainly on Egling­ton Ave, St Clair West and Spad­ina Ave. At those major roads, it is the only place we see dif­fer­ent uses other than res­i­den­tial. There are gro­cery stores, con­ve­nient stores, cof­fee shops and offices in those areas.

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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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