Wych­wood Park is a neigh­bour­hood enclave and for­mer gated com­mu­nity located north of Dav­en­port Road, just west of Bathurst Street. All of Wych­wood Park’s houses are listed on the Toronto His­tor­i­cal Board’s Inven­tory of Her­itage Properties.

The neigh­bour­hood proper is one of the small­est in Toronto, com­posed on only the one sin­gle street, Wych­wood Park, with only 57 houses on it. The sur­round­ing area may be called Wych­wood, but it is not the same.

A hand­ful of the first Wych­wood Park houses were built in the late 1800s, how­ever most of the houses in Wych­wood Park were built in stages between 1906 and 1935. A few houses were also built in the early 1950s.

Many of the older Wych­wood Park houses were designed by Eden Smith, an archi­tect who spe­cial­ized Eng­lish Arts and Crafts style houses. The influ­ence of Smith’s tra­di­tional Eng­lish design forms is evi­dent through­out Wych­wood Park.

Wych­wood Park Real Estate

Wych­wood Park was orig­i­nally founded as an artists’ colony in the late nine­teenth cen­tury as a pri­vate project by Mar­maduke Matthews and Alexan­der Jardin. The area was still a rural region on the edge of the city then, and Matthews planned out a bucolic com­mu­nity and named it after Wych­wood in his native Oxford­shire. It is con­sid­ered part of the over­all Wych­wood offi­cial neigh­bour­hood as des­ig­nated by the City of Toronto.

In 1874, Matthews built the first house in the com­mu­nity, at num­ber six Wych­wood Park. The sec­ond Wych­wood Park house, at num­ber twenty two Wych­wood Park, was built in 1877, by Matthews’ friend Alexan­der Jar­dine. Matthews and Jar­dine jointly bought the land that abutted their estates and in 1891, reg­is­tered a plan of sub­di­vi­sion for what is now the Wych­wood Park neighbourhood.

The land was divided into irreg­u­larly shaped lots, with a cen­tral park built around a pond and ten­nis courts designed by the archi­tect Arthur Edwin What­mough (born 1884, Toronto) who put care­ful restric­tions upon what could be built in the com­mu­nity. What­mough designed many of the houses that were built in the Arts and Crafts style. A few oth­ers were also designed by promi­nent archi­tect Eden Smith, who lived in the neighbourhood.

Wych­wood Park Map

One of Toronto’s ravines ran through the heart of the neigh­bour­hood, and this was pre­served as park­land. Tad­dle Creek once ran through the ravine, and it was dammed to cre­ate a large pond in the mid­dle of the park. This is now one of the only parts of the city where Tad­dle Creek is still vis­i­ble above ground (nay, one of the only areas in Toronto where ANY of the old creeks can still be seen unburied).

While the area was amal­ga­mated into the city of Toronto in 1909, it remains a pri­vate com­mu­nity. The streets and ameni­ties are paid for by the local res­i­dents, and the com­mu­nity is man­aged by an exec­u­tive coun­cil. It is one of Toronto’s more exclu­sive neigh­bour­hoods with house prices well over a mil­lion dol­lars. Sev­eral promi­nent fig­ures have lived in the area, includ­ing Mar­shall McLuhan and Ana­tol Rapoport. In 1985 the area became the first res­i­den­tial zone in Ontario to be granted her­itage status.

Wych­wood Barns, a for­mer Toronto Tran­sit Com­mis­sion street­car main­te­nance facil­ity located imme­di­ately to the north of Wych­wood Park, was trans­formed into a com­mu­nity park, while the orig­i­nal struc­ture remains.

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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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