Riverdale is a thriv­ing res­i­den­tial neigh­bour­hood in Toronto, located just east of the down­town core. Since its amend­ment to the City of Toronto in 1884, it has devel­oped a stature as a neigh­bour­hood of inde­pen­dent arts, with sev­eral inde­pen­dent gal­leries located along Queen Street East. The res­i­den­tial land­scape within Riverdale is made up pri­mar­ily of Vic­to­rian and Edwar­dian style homes, con­structed in the 1800s as board­ing rooms for the working-class. Many of the res­i­dences have since been rede­vel­oped into homes for young fam­i­lies with homes redesigned to fit the tree-lined streetscape. The has dra­mat­i­cally increased the hous­ing value over the years and with many young pro­fes­sion­als as some of the cur­rent res­i­dents, Riverdale is now a trendy and expen­sive res­i­den­tial district.

The neighbourhood’s char­ac­ter is also defined by the CN Rail­way, which sep­a­rates the area into two dis­tricts, North Riverdale (north of the tracks) which is pri­mar­ily res­i­den­tial (for the excep­tion of Ger­rard Square Mall and The Dan­forth and South Riverdale (south to the Lakeshore) where a more afflu­ent and wealthy char­ac­ter is seen in the bistros and cof­fee shops located along Queen Street East.

Riverdale is also home to three large recre­ational parks; Riverdale Park, adja­cent to the Don River, With­row Park, in the North Riverdale, and Jim­mie Simp­son Park, in the South. These three parks serve as great land­marks within the neigh­bour­hood that many res­i­dents use for var­i­ous activ­i­ties, from swim­ming in out­door pools to tobog­gan­ing down the steep hills in Riverdale Park dur­ing the win­ter­time. These are the most com­mon out­door spaces within the area and accord­ing to Toronto’s Offi­cial Plan, are to be pre­served as an area of green space in the years to come.

South Riverdale, as its name sug­gests, is the south­ern half of the Riverdale neigh­bour­hood. Its approx­i­mate bound­aries are: the Don Val­ley Park­way to the west, Jones Ave. to the east, Ger­rard Street East to the north, and Lake Shore Boule­vard to the south.

Map show­ing North Riverdale and South Riverdale

South Riverdale com­prises many smaller neighbourhoods:

River­side

River­side, for­merly known as the Queen Broad­view Vil­lage is a small neigh­bour­hood located within the larger neigh­bour­hood of South Riverdale. Def­i­nite bound­aries have never been drawn for River­side, but accord­ing to the River­side Busi­ness Improve­ment Area Plan’s def­i­n­i­tions it can be assumed that the bor­ders are the Don River to the west, Ger­rard St. East to the north, Logan Avenue to the east and East­ern Ave. to the south.

River­side is a mixed income and largely mul­ti­cul­tural neigh­bour­hood cur­rently expe­ri­enc­ing a trend of gen­tri­fi­ca­tion along Queen St. East and Broad­view Ave. While it is a small neigh­bour­hood it is home to sev­eral places of note such as the for­mer Don Destruc­tor, Toronto’s only garbage incin­er­a­tor, and Don Mount Court, a social hous­ing project that is under rede­vel­op­ment and will be rebuilt as part of a mixed social hous­ing and mar­ket value com­mu­nity. The mar­ket value por­tion is being sold under the name River­towne. Unques­tion­ably, the biggest land­mark in the neigh­bour­hood is the New Broad­view House Hotel, a romanesque hotel con­structed in 1893 that was the tallest struc­ture in South Riverdale for sev­eral decades. Other major land­marks include the Ralph Thorn­ton Com­mu­nity Cen­tre, Broad­view Lofts, and The Opera House.

The area was once home to a large young pop­u­la­tion which is evi­dent in the clus­ter of schools just east of Broad­view Ave. Dun­das Jr. Pub­lic School is the res­i­dent school for chil­dren in kinder­garten through to fifth grade, after which they are trans­ferred over to Queen Alexan­dra Sr. Pub­lic School which sees stu­dents through to eighth grade. It is also home First Nations School of Toronto, a cul­tural sur­vival school that places heavy empha­sis on abo­rig­i­nal val­ues and cul­ture, and the cur­rent loca­tion of SEED Alter­na­tive Sec­ondary School, Canada’s first pub­lic alter­na­tive school.

Riverdale Farm

East Chi­na­town

Toronto’s sec­ond largest ‘china town’, also known as East Chi­na­town is found at Broad­view & Gerrard.

Stu­dio District

The south­ern part of South Riverdale, just north of the Port Lands, is what’s called the Stu­dio Dis­trict. Indus­trial ware­houses along Lakeshore Avenue house pro­duc­tion stu­dios and many peo­ple work­ing in film and tele­vi­sion live in the old Vic­to­ri­ans found along the area’s side streets. Car­law and Queen has become an arts hub, with many artists choos­ing to run their stu­dios from the var­i­ous work-live lofts.

Blake-Jones

Blake-Jones is a sec­tion of tree-lined streets with res­i­dences built from the 1870s to 1930s. The neigh­bour­hood extends along Jones Avenue com­menc­ing at the ceme­tery south of Strath­cona and extend­ing down to Hunter. It is bor­dered by Dan­forth Avenue to the north, Pape Avenue to the west, Green­wood Avenue to the east and the CN Rail­way tracks just south of Riverdale/Boultbee Avenue to the south. Houses along Blake Street are more afford­able in this neigh­bour­hood than in many areas of the city because most of the homes are semi-detached. There are also a sig­nif­i­cant amount of res­i­dents within pub­lic hous­ing, resid­ing in apart­ment and town­house com­plex of Blake/Boultbee, owned by Toronto Com­mu­nity Hous­ing. With a 33.3% unem­ploy­ment rate in youth aged 15–19 (City of Toronto, 2006), the Blake-Jones cor­ri­dor of Riverdale has seen an increase in crime within recent years.

There are three local ele­men­tary schools zoned to the area; Blake Street (which also houses East end Alter­na­tive), Earl Grey, and Pape Avenue. The high school that is zoned to the area is Riverdale Col­le­giate Insti­tute. There is also an alter­na­tive high school, East­ern Com­merce, in the Donlands/Danforth area.

The neigh­bour­hood is served by the Pape, Don­lands, and Green­wood sub­way sta­tions and the 72 Pape and 83 Jones bus routes and is also home to the Green­wood Sub­way Yard, a land­mark within the area.

Riverdale Real Estate

The Pocket

Located within Blake-Jones is an area res­i­dents refer to as The Pocket. Over time there have been some dif­fer­ences on the exact def­i­n­i­tion of the area, but cur­rently the Pocket is under­stood to be “acces­si­ble only from the west along Jones Avenue”. This would indi­cate that the area would be bor­dered by Chatham Street at the north (which itself is not acces­si­ble from Jones), and on the south­ern end by Boult­bee Ave. The East­ern side is bor­dered by the TTC Green­wood yard.

The name “The Pocket” was cre­ated by area res­i­dents dur­ing a plan­ning ses­sion attended by Susan McMur­ray, also an edi­tor of a newslet­ter for the area. The name has stuck in part because of the “vil­lage feel” of the com­mu­nity, and has become well used by res­i­dents and real­tors in the area. The Pocket has been expe­ri­enc­ing a gen­tri­fi­ca­tion sim­i­lar of that to the most of Riverdale and other neigh­bour­hoods within Toronto. For The Pocket, this started in the 1990s. The neigh­bour­hood is listed as one the ten hottest areas in Toronto Life and is described as “cov­eted” by the Globe and Mail indi­cat­ing that buy­ers will pay a pre­mium to live in the com­mu­nity. The Pocket has an above aver­age num­ber of peo­ple from the Mus­lim and Greek Ortho­dox com­mu­ni­ties liv­ing in the area.

The area has ben­e­fited from a strong group of vol­un­teers who have done much to make the area safer and pret­tier. Such projects as clean­ing up and renam­ing Ben Kerr Lane, an annual street party on Daw­son Avenue, street sales, orga­nized pot lucks, not to men­tion a great num­ber of improve­ments to Phin Park. Phin Park has had a num­ber of mature trees planted along its cen­tral lighted walk­way, an out­door ice rink cre­ated every win­ter, the place­ment of large boul­ders removed dur­ing street work, and the build­ing of a gazebo next to the play­ground for par­ents to cool off while their chil­dren play. Through­out the year there are events at the park orga­nized and paid for by the com­mu­nity includ­ing monthly movie nights and an excel­lent fire­works show on Vic­to­ria Day. Another beau­ti­fi­ca­tion project included build­ing a small orchard and com­mu­nity gar­den area north of the Green­wood TTC yard.

Other

Some Riverdale res­i­dents dif­fer­en­ti­ate between “upper” and “lower” Riverdale. “Upper Riverdale” is char­ac­ter­ized as the part of the neigh­bour­hood north of Riverdale Ave., and “Lower Riverdale” is the area south of Riverdale Ave. In terms of the qual­ity of the hous­ing sup­ply, homes built in “Upper Riverdale” are more likely to be ren­o­vated, but “Lower Riverdale” con­tains more orig­i­nal and clas­sic designs of the late 19^th cen­tury. There are a num­ber of remark­able century-old homes built on Simp­son and Lan­g­ley Avenues, the lat­ter street named after Toronto’s well-known early 20^th cen­tury archi­tect, and the for­mer fea­tur­ing the old­est Vic­to­rian houses in Riverdale. Of note, Simp­son Avenue is home to the orig­i­nal six houses of Riverdale; located at the west end of the street and locally known as the ‘Six Sis­ters.’ The area bounded by Dun­das St. East in the south, Jones Ave. to the east, the rail­way tracks to the north, and Car­law Ave. to the west is also referred to by local res­i­dents as “Bad­gerow,” after a res­i­den­tial street that runs through the cen­tre of that area. This pocket includes the leg­endary Maple Leaf Tav­ern, as well as a Sikh tem­ple, Turk­ish cul­tural cen­tre and Jew­ish ceme­tery, in addi­tion to the Ger­rard Square shop­ping mall.

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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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