South Richvale

The place

South Richvale occupies the southwest corner of Richmond Hill. Yonge Street is its eastern edge, Bathurst Street its western, Carrville Road its northern boundary and Highway 7 its southern, where the city meets Vaughan and Markham. Richvale as a whole is split by Carrville Road into a southern half and a northern half, and the two have never been alike.

The land was farmed first. Rowland Burr built a house on Carrville Road in the 1820s and ran a mill on the East Don River; the Richmond Hill Historical Society now operates the Burr House as a craft gallery. Much of the area later belonged to the Don Head Farm, known for its sheep and cattle. In the 1920s the fields were subdivided and sold as one of the earliest commuter suburbs north of the city, with Richvale Public School opening in 1923 and a post office following in 1932. Most of the houses that followed went up in the 1950s, when veterans and young families bought wide lots and built single-storey homes on them. That decision, made by people who wanted space more than they wanted a large house, is why South Richvale became what it is.

The houses

The post-war bungalows and side-splits were never the point; the lots were. Beginning in the 1990s, as Richmond Hill’s wealth grew, owners and builders began taking the small houses down and replacing them with two-storey custom homes. The first wave favoured stone and brick in a loosely French or Georgian manner, with multiple-car garages and formal front landscaping. More recent builds lean toward flat roofs, dark window frames and long horizontal lines, and increasingly toward homes designed around a rear garden with a pool and a pavilion.

A custom build here tends to use the depth of the lot rather than its width. Houses sit well back from the street, with a long drive, a side-entry or courtyard garage, and principal rooms that open to the back. Walk-out lower levels are common where the land falls toward the Don. Original bungalows still stand in good numbers, and some have been renovated well, but when one of them comes to market it is usually valued as land.

Streets and lots

The names buyers ask for are Westwood Lane, Garden Avenue, Spruce Avenue, Oak Avenue, Roosevelt Drive and the quieter loops such as Eleanor Circle. The best addresses share a few traits: a lot that backs onto the golf course or the East Don valley, a frontage wide enough for a side-loaded garage, and a street that carries no through traffic. Lots are typically rectangular and deep, and the deepest ones, particularly near the ravine, have the character of small estates.

Tree cover is mature because the subdivision is a century old. Spruce and oak planted by the first owners now define the streetscape, and the ravine lands along the Don add a wooded backdrop that newer parts of the city cannot replicate. Hunter’s Point Wildlife Park, in the southwest corner, keeps a stretch of that valley as public open space.

Living here

Hillcrest Mall, on the west side of Yonge Street, is the neighbourhood’s commercial anchor and the only enclosed shopping centre in Richmond Hill. The strip of Yonge between Highway 7 and Carrville Road adds restaurants, groceries and services. Richvale Community Centre, Richvale Athletic Park and the Richvale branch of the public library on Pearson Avenue are the civic core, and Morgan Boyle Park has tennis courts and a splash pad. The Richmond Hill Golf Club, on Bathurst Street at the south end, is a public eighteen-hole course.

Transit is a real advantage. Viva rapid transit runs along Yonge Street, and the Richmond Hill Centre terminal and Langstaff GO station sit at Yonge and Highway 7, within a few minutes of most of the neighbourhood. Highway 407 is immediately south and Highway 404 a short drive east, so the commute to downtown Toronto or to Pearson is among the shortest available in the city. The Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts and the old village core along Yonge are a ten-minute drive north, past the Mill Pond area.

Buying and selling in South Richvale

Homes come to market here in small numbers each year, and the two types sell to different buyers. Original bungalows are bought by builders and by families who intend to build their own house; the price is set by frontage, depth and what the lot backs onto. Finished custom houses sell to families moving up from the newer subdivisions to the north and east, and to buyers leaving Toronto’s Bayview and Yonge corridors who want land without leaving the Yonge Street spine. A meaningful share of both kinds change hands privately, because owners who have lived here for decades prefer a quiet sale to a sign on the lawn.

Sellers should know that presentation matters less here than in the planned subdivisions, and that the right buyer for a lot is often already known to a local agent. For a rebuilt house, documenting the build, the permits and the landscaping does more for value than staging. The register is where we start when a house here is about to change hands; add your name to it and you will hear first.

South Richvale is where Richmond Hill’s custom-home culture began, and it is still where the largest lots inside the city’s southern boundary can be found. It rewards buyers who think in decades rather than in listings.