Yonge Uplands & Old Thornhill

The place

Thornhill began here. Settlers took up lots along Yonge Street in the 1790s after the road was cut north from York, and Benjamin Thorne arrived from Dorset in 1820 to build mills on the Don and give the settlement his name. By the 1840s a business district had grown along Yonge between Centre Street and John Street, with stagecoaches stopping on their way to Holland Landing. The electric radial line up Yonge Street arrived in the 1890s and made it possible to live in Thornhill and work in the city, which is the pattern the neighbourhood has followed ever since.

Old Thornhill is the village itself, on both sides of Yonge. Both sides of the village were designated heritage conservation districts in the 1980s, the Markham side along John Street as that city’s first. Yonge Uplands is the name the team uses for the Vaughan avenues that run west from the village toward the Uplands golf course, where the land rises and the lots deepen. Together they form a single market with two very different kinds of house.

The houses

Inside the heritage districts the houses are the real thing: frame and brick homes from the 1830s onward, several early churches, and the kind of small-scale commercial buildings that survive nowhere else in York Region. Owners here restore rather than replace, and the district plans govern additions, materials and even fence heights. A heritage house on Old Yonge Street or Colborne Street is bought by someone who wants that discipline.

West of the village, on Uplands Avenue, Helen Avenue, Thornhill Avenue and the streets between them, the post-war bungalows and two-storeys that first filled the avenues have largely been replaced. A custom house here is typically a full two storeys of stone, with a three-car garage set to the side or tucked below grade, a deep front setback and a rear garden long enough for a pool and a lawn beyond it. Transitional and French-inflected elevations dominate, with a growing number of flat-roofed modern houses on the lots nearest the golf course. The depth of the lots is what makes these houses work; the same floor plan on a standard suburban lot would feel crowded.

Streets and lots

Uplands Avenue is the address most often asked for. It runs west from Yonge toward the club gates and holds the largest rebuilt houses on the deepest lots. Helen Avenue, one street over, is quieter and slightly narrower, with the same depth of lot and a canopy of older trees. Thornhill Avenue, at the northern edge of the heritage district, mixes designated houses near Yonge with large new construction further west. Centre Street carries more traffic but has several of the finest heritage properties on the Vaughan side.

On the Markham side of Yonge, John Street and Colborne Street hold the designated houses of the Thornhill Markham district, and the lots there are village-scaled rather than estate-scaled. The best addresses in the Uplands are the lots that back onto the golf course or sit at the dead-end western extremities of the avenues, where there is no through traffic. Ravine is not the defining feature here as it is in Royal Orchard; the premium comes from lot depth, tree cover and distance from Yonge.

Living here

Uplands Golf and Country Club at the west end of Uplands Avenue is a nine-hole course on what remains of Stanley Thompson’s 1922 layout, and the Uplands Ski Centre, opened in 1989 on part of the former course, gives the neighbourhood a small ski hill with a chairlift that few suburbs can match. The Thornhill Club, another Thompson course from the same year, sits just north on the west side of Yonge and hosted the 1945 Canadian Open. Oakbank Pond Park on the Vaughan side is a quiet place for a walk, and Pomona Mills Park across Yonge offers a longer trail along the East Don.

Yonge Street is the high street. Restaurants, bakeries and the Shops on Yonge are within a short walk, and the Promenade shopping centre is a few minutes west on Centre Street. Viva and York Region Transit run the Yonge corridor to Finch Station, and Highway 407 is reached from Yonge or Bathurst in a few minutes. Downtown Toronto is roughly half an hour by car outside rush hour. The Thornhill Village Library and the churches along Yonge give the village a civic life that newer subdivisions lack.

Buying and selling in Yonge Uplands & Old Thornhill

Heritage houses in the village come up rarely and are often sold between people who already know each other through the historical society or the neighbourhood. Buyers are a specific group who understand the obligations of a designated property and want them. On the Uplands avenues, original houses still trade as building lots and attract both builders and end users planning a custom home; the rebuilt houses change hands less frequently, and a notable share sell privately before any listing is prepared.

Sellers in the heritage districts should have their designation paperwork and any approved drawings ready, because serious buyers will ask on the first visit. Sellers on the avenues should know that a builder and an end user will value the same lot differently, and that depth, frontage and trees matter more than the condition of an older house. Buyers comparing the Uplands with the estate streets of South Richvale a few minutes north will find the Uplands closer to Yonge and the village. If you are watching this neighbourhood, join the private register and we will tell you when something is about to come up, listed or not.

This is the part of Thornhill with a past, and the rules that come with one. For buyers who want a large custom house on a deep lot within walking distance of a real village street, the Uplands avenues are the answer. For those who want the village itself, the supply is small and worth waiting for.