Parkdale

Parkdale is a neighbourhood and former village in Toronto, west of downtown. The neighbourhood is bounded on the west by Roncesvalles Avenue, on the north by Queen Street. It is bounded on the east by Dufferin Street from Queen Street south, and on the south by Lake Ontario. The original village incorporated an area north of Queen Street, east of Roncesvalles from Fermanagh east to the main rail lines. The village area was roughly one square kilometer in area.

Parkdale was founded as an independent settlement within York County in the 1850s. It was an upper income residential area for the first half of the 20th Century, with several notable mansions. The area changed dramatically with the building of the Gardiner Expressway in 1955, demolishing the southern section of the neighbourhood together with the Sunnyside Amusement Park, and the creation of a barrier between the neighbourhood and the lakeshore. Today, it is largely a working class neighbourhood, with a mix of low and high income residents, as well as new immigrants, and many artists and young professionals.

The Parkdale neighbourhood possesses many positive attributes. It has some of Toronto's most vibrant shopping districts, wonderful tree lined streets, affordable Victorian homes, and impressive mansions that remind onlookers that Parkdale was once Toronto's wealthiest district. Parkdale is also within walking distance of Toronto's waterfront parks.

The area that extends northward along Roncesvalles Avenue has seen a turnover to a mix of residents with a younger average age and higher proportion of families compared to the neighbourhoods to the west. A significant amount of renovation of the older homes has occurred and property values have risen accordingly. Some of the older, family-run businesses have closed, and new restaurants, bars and shops have opened up in their place.

Information from Wikipedia.org