Jefferson

The place

Jefferson lies in the north of Richmond Hill, between Bathurst Street on the west and Bayview Avenue on the east, with Gamble Road as its approximate southern edge and the older community of Oak Ridges to the north. Yonge Street divides it. The land climbs as it goes north, because this is the southern face of the Oak Ridges Moraine, and the Humber, Don and Rouge rivers all have headwaters near Bathurst Street and Jefferson Sideroad.

The name comes from the Jefferson family, who arrived from Yorkshire in the 1830s and kept a general store on Yonge Street; a one-room common school opened here in 1840, and a post office followed in 1882. Before them, the French royalist settlers of the short-lived Windham colony held land along Yonge north of Elgin Mills in 1799, and an Ontario heritage plaque on Yonge Street just north of Jefferson Sideroad records them. For most of the twentieth century Jefferson was farms, woodlots and a few estates along the concession roads. That changed from the mid-2000s, when the fields between Bathurst and Bayview were planned and built as family subdivisions, and the hamlet’s name was given to the result.

The houses

The subdivisions set the pattern. Macleod’s Landing and Inspiration, off Bathurst Street, are typical: two-storey detached houses in red and brown brick with stone accents, drawing on Georgian and Tudor forms, with double garages, four or five bedrooms and open-plan main floors. Semi-detached houses and townhouses line the collector roads. Lots are a step up from those in the city’s southern subdivisions, and the slope gives many houses walk-out basements and long views south.

Custom work happens on the older parcels. Along Bayview Avenue and the side roads, properties that were once small farms or country houses sit on acreage, and when they sell they are bought as sites. The new houses that result are large stone and brick estates set back behind gates and long drives, often with outbuildings and pools, and they are the closest thing Jefferson has to the estate culture of South Richvale. Within the subdivisions themselves, the houses are too young for teardowns and the activity is finishing basements and landscaping gardens.

Streets and lots

Jefferson Forest Drive, Shadow Falls Drive and Hayfield Crescent are the names that come up most often, and the streets nearest the forest edge are the most requested. Tower Hill, at the south end, is a smaller pocket with its own identity. The subdivision plan uses crescents and courts off a few collectors, so through traffic is limited.

Within the subdivisions, lots are rectangular and consistent, with premium paid for those that back onto the Saigeon Trail corridor, a park or the forest. On the older parcels, lots are irregular and large, with mature trees and in some cases a creek. Tree cover in the new streets is still filling in; on the forest edge and the acreage it is mature moraine woodland of oak, maple and pine.

Living here

Jefferson Forest is the centrepiece: a large block of moraine woodland that York Region and the city bought together to protect it, with an informal network of natural trails and a gravel multi-use path of several kilometres linking them. It connects north toward Bond Lake and the Oak Ridges Corridor. The Saigeon Trail runs through the middle of the neighbourhood as a linear park with a walking and cycling path and an off-leash dog area, and smaller parks sit within each subdivision.

The Summit Golf and Country Club occupies a large tract on Yonge Street. Founded in 1912, laid out first by George Cumming and George Lyon and reworked by Stanley Thompson, it is one of the oldest clubs in the Toronto area and a private one. Shopping is in plazas along Yonge and Bathurst, with Hillcrest Mall and the downtown core about ten minutes south. Viva Blue rapid transit runs on Yonge; Gormley GO station and Highway 404 are reached by Stouffville Road, and the drive to the 404 is about ten minutes. The Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts and the Mill Pond area are the nearest cultural anchors.

Buying and selling in Jefferson

Because the housing is young, Jefferson has a steady flow of resales as families’ needs change, and it is one of the more liquid parts of the Richmond Hill market. Buyers are mostly young and growing families, many moving up from townhouses and semis elsewhere in York Region, and they weigh schools, parks and the trail above all else. The older estate parcels are a separate market: they come up rarely, are bought by builders or by families planning a custom house, and are often sold without ever being listed.

Sellers of subdivision houses should present a finished basement and a landscaped garden, because buyers compare similar houses closely. Sellers of acreage should know what the land can carry under conservation and moraine rules before they go to market, since that determines who can buy it and what they will pay. Tell us the house you have in mind and we will send what fits, including the sales that are arranged before a sign goes up.

Jefferson is Richmond Hill’s newest large neighbourhood built on some of its oldest settled ground. The forest and the golf club will not move, and the subdivisions around them are growing into their trees.