Tag Archives: Governor’s Bridge
Governor’s Bridge
Governor’s Bridge is a bridge and small neighbourhood in Toronto, located to the east of Rosedale and Moore Park, and like them is one of the most expensive in Toronto. Unlike them it was part of the former city of East York. It is located between the railway tracks and the Don Valley ravine. The neighbourhood is named for the Governor’s Bridge that crosses the Moore Park Ravine and connects the area to Rosedale.
It is a very small neighbourhood with only a couple of hundred homes. The area was originally purchased and subdivided in 1911 by two prominent Toronto lawyers: William Douglas and Wallace Nesbitt. Each has a street in the neighbourhood named after him. Construction had to wait until the construction of Governor’s Bridge in 1923 connected the area to the rest of the city. The bridge was named in honour of the Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario whose home Chorley Park was located just south of the bridge.
The west part of the neighbourhood was quickly built up during the Roaring Twenties boom period, and most of the houses date from this era. Many of them are ornamented with Spanish-style accents. This style was also very popular in California at the time, and was thus often featured and glamourized in films of the period. In its early history the area was thus sometimes nicknamed “Little Hollywood.” It has remained an elite enclave that in recent years has seen many of the smaller bungalows replaced by much larger new homes.
Governors Bridge
The eastern part of the neighbourhood, across the rail line, has a very different history. After the Second World War Bayview Avenue was extended south from Moore Avenue through the Don Valley. This opened the possibility of developing the land just east of Governor’s Bridge, which could be reached along Bayview.
In 1959 Harry Frimerman, a Toronto land developer obtained permission from East York to construct a set of apartment buildings on the site. This caused immediate outrage from the residents of Governor’s Bridge and beyond who had been promised the area would remain as park land. Within days the city reversed itself, but legally the development permit could not be revoked. The developers began construction of the Hampton Park Apartments. Unable to block the construction itself, the city refused to extend water and sewer service to the site.
In 1960 the developers halted construction of the partially completed apartments. A hollow seven story shell of a building remained on the site for over twenty years. The position atop the ravine and next to the Don Valley Parkway made them into a prominent landmark and they were nicknamed the Bayview Ghost. East York rezoned the area for single family homes and the “Ghost” was finally demolished in November 1981 at the developer’s expense.
A new bridge was built linking Governor’s Bridge to the other side of the tracks, and in the late 1990s the Conservatory Group began work on a new subdivision named the Governor’s Bridge Estates. The development consists of 60 homes in a neo-eclectic style. This development also ran into difficulties as people proved unwilling to buy homes overlooking an expressway at Rosedale prices.
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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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East York
It is separated by the Don River from the former City of Toronto. Traditional East York is southeast of the river, and the neighbourhoods of Leaside, Bennington Heights and densely-populated Thorncliffe Park are northwest of the river. The heart of East York is filled with middle-class and working-class homes, with extensive high-rise developments along peripheral major streets and in Crescent Town and Thorncliffe Park.
East York was originally part of York Township. Following the incorporation of the Township of North York in 1922, York Township was divided by Toronto, Leaside and North Toronto. With the rapid growth that followed the opening of the Bloor-Danforth (Prince Edward) Viaduct in 1919, the residents of the eastern half of York Township felt they had been neglected by the township when it came to roads, sewers and other municipal services. Left with the option to either join the City of Toronto or branch out on its own, 448 East Yorkers voted to incorporate a new township, while 102 voted to amalgamate with Toronto. The Township of East York was incorporated on January 1, 1924 with a population of 19,849. The western half of York Township retained its name.
East York was originally populated by working class English people who valued the opportunity to own small homes of their own, with front lawns and back gardens. Many had immigrated from Lancashire and Yorkshire. In 1961, 71.7% of the population identified themselves as having British origins.
East York and neighbourhoods
In the late 1940s, after World War II, East York became home to many returning veterans and their families. Many inexpensive homes were built, including the houses around Topham Park, by the government, to house the returning veterans and the baby boomers. The local government was both socially conscious and frugal, fitting the residents’ self-image of East York as filled with supportive neighbours and non-government organizations.
For many years, the borough did not allow the serving of alcoholic beverages in any restaurants, etc. The result was a heavy concentration of alcohol-serving restaurants and bars on Danforth Avenue, a main street in the city of Toronto running east-west just south of East York. The prohibition of serving alcohol was eliminated in the 1970s.
The borough of East York was established in 1967 through the amalgamation of the former township of East York and the former town of Leaside. Leaside was a planned industrial and residential community. East York has over the years been a residential enclave for senior citizens, as the original owners from the 1940s age and as younger families move out to suburbs to live in larger houses. East York had its own fire department with three stations, which are still in operation today under the combined Toronto Fire Services. Recently, rapid and accelerated gentrification has changed many neighbourhoods. Many one-story bungalows have added second floors, and many shops have been converted to more upscale shops. Canada’s only borough, East York was semi-autonomous within the greater municipality of Metropolitan Toronto.
In 1998, East York, along with North York, York, Scarborough, Etobicoke and Old Toronto, were amalgamated into the new “megacity” of Toronto. East York’s last mayor was Michael Prue who went on to become city councillor for East York, and then a Member of Provincial Parliament for Beaches—East York in 2001. Between 2002 and 2005, the East York Civic Centre’s “True Davidson Council Chamber” was used to hold the Toronto Computer Leasing Inquiry/Toronto External Contracts Inquiry.
Read more in depth about all of the East York neighbourhoods:
- Bennington Heights
- Governor’s Bridge
- Leaside
- Old East York
- Pape Village
- Parkview Hills
- Todmorden Village
- Topham Park
- Woodbine Gardens
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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.
—————————————————————————————————–
Incoming search terms
Behind the typical facade, this is a green house worthy of 2010
Technology and a new ecological consciousness are transforming the innards of some new houses
John Bentley Mays – Globe and Mail
Driving or walking along the leafy streets in the Governor’s Bridge district of Rosedale, you might never notice the house I’m writing about this week. It’s new, but it fits without a glitch into the quiet urban streetscape of similarly new, stylistically old-fashioned homes.
What counts about this 3,400-square-foot dwelling is not its architecture, which is hardly daring or inventive, but its exceptional efficiency. Using some of the most advanced energy systems now available in the marketplace, Toronto designer Richard C. Brightling has created a house that looks forward into the future of construction, when all new residences will be required to perform much better than they do now. With clients demanding greener solutions to their need for housing, and architects increasingly adept at coming up with such solutions, that future is not far off.
Energy-saving features of the Governor’s Bridge house include a high-performance building envelope that is insulated to a standard considerably beyond what is now required by city construction codes. The atmosphere inside this tight skin is kept fresh and clean by an exchanger that replaces and filters the air every four hours.
Heating and cooling is accomplished with a $70,000 geothermal system. Six fluid-carrying tubes have been sunk 200 feet into the ground, where the temperature is a steady 14.4 C. Pumped up to the surface and into a control room in the basement – this tightly packed, high-tech facility resembles what I imagine a submarine interior to look like – the fluid is then used to modify the temperature of fan-forced air. Geo-thermal energy is not free; electricity is needed to run the pumps and raise the temperature from its base level of 14.4C to something more comfortable. Nevertheless, Mr. Brightling told me, his clients’ annual savings on air conditioning come in at 30 to 40%.
Hot water for showers, dishwashing and so forth is generated by solar thermal panels installed on the roof. Glycol (which does not freeze in winter) circulates through the panels, gathering heat from the sun that, in turn, heats water in the tank. I was surprised to find that the tap water was very hot indeed – on a cool spring day, with little or no help from hydro. This $8,000 system works efficiently in our northern climate for most of the year, Mr. Brightling said, taking notable strain off the electricity grid (and hence lightening the electric bill).
Being a confirmed apartment-dweller, I don’t have a lawn, nor do I understand the North American obsession with having lawns. But if one must keep a green patch out front and back of the house, it should pull its weight, environmentally speaking. It does so here. Mr. Brightling has installed a 4,500-litre tank under the back yard of this project that effectively catches rain water running off the roofs of the main house and the garden shed and makes this water available for irrigating the lawns. This uncomplicated plumbing arrangement is an example of good ecological stewardship, especially in a city that wastes far too much water.
Back inside the house, Mr. Brightling has introduced a few other smaller features that also enhance the pleasure and sense of security in living there. There are the ceiling sprinklers, for instance – nearly invisible fixtures intended to deploy individually when the air around them reaches 100 C. And there is the lighting, equipped with low-wattage LED and halogen bulbs to further enhance the energy efficiency of the house.
These, then, are the major and minor systems at work in Mr. Brightling’s technical outfitting – some complex, others simple, all suitable for comfortable living in a sustainable, environmentally responsible manner. Nor is the cost of these green measures, as a percentage of total expenditure, really prohibitive. Of the $1.8-million it took to build the Governor’s Bridge house, only $150,000 was invested in green technologies – all of which will bring cost savings down the line.
Now, to marry such advanced thinking about the environment to contemporary good design! Like the passion for lawns, the desire for a 2010 house that looks like it was done in the 1920s escapes me. Windows were small back in those days, interiors were chopped up into small rooms, the middle of the building was always dark. To be fair, Mr. Brightling has opened up the rear of the Governor’s Bridge house to the light, but the front façade is as fusty and serious as anything in Rosedale from 80 years ago. The architectural taste of Rosedale residents, it appears, has some catching up to do, if it’s to stay abreast of the technological advances taking root in their dignified old neighbourhood.
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Contact the Jeffrey Team for more information - 416-388-1960
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