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Bound by Bloor, Yonge and Moore Avenue, extending to the Leaside-Bennington district in the east.
The expanded city neighbourhood of Rosedale-Moore Park encompasses two of the old city’s most desirable neighbourhoods. Rosedale, which occupies the bottom half of the district, was named for the wild roses found growing in the dales by the wife of Sheriff William Botsford Jarvis. Jarvis began developing the area in the 19th century. From the beginning, development followed the natural contours of the existing ravines (it was cheaper than building bridges) rather than an imposed grid.
Enter Rosedale, and you enter a living museum of elite Canadian history: at least half the value of any Rosedale property lies in what has already happened on the same ground in earlier generations. (You pay for the echoes.) Rosedale is where the characters of Robertson Davies lived their gothic lives, and it’s the district where Morley Callaghan wrote his later books. Rosedale has sent cabinet ministers to Ottawa and served for generations as the shining Camelot toward which generations of Bay Streeters hopefully pointed their careers.
Most of the area’s Georgian and Edwardian homes went up in the building boom of the early 20th century, when improved access roads suddenly made Rosedale the suburb of choice, and the rich moved from the Annex and Sherbourne-Jarvis, though many of the homes are jammed onto lots that are proportionally smaller than those of other elite districts.
Many of the residents of Moore Park, which occupies the district’s northern edge, open their back doors onto the wilderness of the area’s magnificent ravine system. The sturdy old houses of Moore Park (often Tudor and Georgian style, built between 1908 and 1930) tend to stay on the market only briefly before being sold.
To outsiders, the street plan of Rosedale seems impenetrable. There is nowhere in downtown Toronto where more people get lost on a regular basis. After a while, strangers realize that the natives like it that way. Unpredictably twisting streets help create an atmosphere of privacy, a quality especially valued in a district so close to the city core. In the larger district, just about everything from shops to public transit is in close proximity, though access to large tracks of green space, with many of the homes hugging leafy ravines, remains a key selling feature. The safe streets and nearby schools appeal to young families.
Call Anna Tulman at 416.909.2662 today!
Anna speaks English, Hebrew, and Russian. |
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