Wychwood Park is a neighbourhood enclave and

private community A private community is a residential community that can be an association or a proprietary organization. Associations can include condominiums, homeowner associations or cooperatives. Whereas governmental communities are financed with taxation, ...

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

, Canada. It is located west of Bathurst Street on the north side of

Davenport Road Davenport Road is an east–west arterial road in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is believed to follow an old native trail along the foot of the scarp of the old shoreline of glacial Lake Iroquois. It currently runs from Yonge Street in the eas ...

, within the larger area of

Bracondale Hill Bracondale Hill, also known as Hillcrest Village or Hillcrest, is a residential neighbourhood of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Annexed by the old City of Toronto in 1909 and developed in 1911 from the Turner estate, Bracondale Hill is on the eastern bo ...

. It is considered part of the overall Wychwood official neighbourhood as designated by the City of Toronto.

History

Wychwood Park was founded as an

artists' colony An art colony, also known as an artists' colony, can be defined two ways. Its most liberal description refers to the organic congregation of artists in towns, villages and rural areas, often drawn by areas of natural beauty, the prior existence o ...

in the late nineteenth century, as a private project by painter

Marmaduke Matthews Marmaduke Matthews (29 August 1837 – 24 September 1913) was an English-Canadian painter, born in Barcheston, Warwickshire, England. Career Matthews studied watercolour painting at Oxford, England before moving to Toronto, Canada in 1860 to ...

and businessman Alexander Jardine. The area was then still a rural region on the edge of the city, and Matthews planned out a

picturesque Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in ''Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year ...

community that he named after

Wychwood Wychwood or Wychwood Forest is a biological Site of Special Scientific Interest north of Witney in Oxfordshire. It is also a Nature Conservation Review site, Grade 1, and an area of is a national nature reserve The site contains a long barrow ...

forest in

Oxfordshire Oxfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the north west of South East England. It is a mainly rural county, with its largest settlement being the city of Oxford. The county is a centre of research and development, primarily ...

, England. Wychwood Park Marmaduke Matthews

The land was divided into irregularly shaped lots, with a central park built around a pond and tennis courts designed by the architect Arthur Edwin Whatmough, and there were careful restrictions upon what could be built in the community. Whatmough designed many of the houses that were built in the

Arts and Crafts A handicraft, sometimes more precisely expressed as artisanal handicraft or handmade, is any of a wide variety of types of work where useful and decorative objects are made completely by one’s hand or by using only simple, non-automated re ...

style. Some of the others were designed by prominent architect

Eden Smith Eden Smith (1858 – 10 October 1949) was a British-born Canadian architect who belonged to the Arts and Crafts movement. Born in Birmingham, England, he achieved prominence as an architect in Toronto, Ontario. He was a founding member of The Art ...

, including his own home at number 5 Wychwood Park, which he built around 1906. One of Toronto's ravines ran through the heart of the neighbourhood, and this was preserved as parkland.

Taddle Creek Taddle Creek is a buried stream in Toronto, Ontario, Canada that flowed a southeasterly course about six kilometres long, from St. Clair Avenue west of Bathurst Street through the present site of Wychwood Park, through the University of Toronto ...

ran through the ravine, and it was dammed to create a large pond in the middle of the park. This is now one of the few places in the city where Taddle Creek is still visible above ground. While the area was amalgamated into the city of Toronto in 1909, Wychwood Park remains a private community, with approximately sixty houses. Wychwood Park's private roads and amenities are paid for by the local residents, and the community is managed by an executive council. Wychwood Park is one of Toronto's more expensive neighbourhoods, with house prices well over a million dollars. A number of prominent people have lived in the community over the years, including

Marshall McLuhan Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridge. He began his ...

(at 3 Wychwood Park),

George Agnew Reid George Agnew Reid (also known as G. A. Reid) (July 25, 1860 – August 23, 1947) was a Canadian artist, painter, influential educator and administrator. He is best known as a genre painter, but his work encompassed the mural, and genre, f ...

(at 81 Wychwood Park), Sir William Gage (at 82 Wychwood Park) and

Anatol Rapoport Anatol Rapoport ( uk, Анатолій Борисович Рапопо́рт; russian: Анато́лий Бори́сович Рапопо́рт; May 22, 1911January 20, 2007) was an American mathematical psychologist. He contributed to general ...

. In 1985, Wychwood Park became the first residential zone in Ontario to be granted heritage status when it was designated as a Heritage Conservation District under the ''

Ontario Heritage Act The ''Ontario Heritage Act'', (the ''Act'') first enacted on March 5, 1975, allows municipalities and the provincial government to designate individual properties and districts in the Province of Ontario, Canada, as being of cultural heritage ...

''. The

Wychwood Barns Artscape Wychwood Barns is a community centre and park in the Bracondale Hill area of Toronto. The converted heritage building was built as a streetcar maintenance facility in 1913. It now contains artist housing and studios, public green space ...

site, a former

Toronto Transit Commission The Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) is the public transport agency that operates bus, subway, streetcar, and paratransit services in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, some of which run into the Peel Region and York Region. It is the oldest and largest ...

streetcar maintenance facility located to the north of Wychwood Park, was transformed into a community park in 2008. The original maintenance buildings (the

St. Clair Carhouse The St. Clair Carhouse (also known informally as the Wychwood Carhouse) was a streetcar facility in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was located south of St. Clair Avenue on a parcel of land bounded by Wychwood Avenue on the east, Benson Avenue on i ...

) on the site were converted into a mixed-use community facility at that time.

References

* Hatcher, Laura. "Wychwood's Taddle Tales". ''

Spacing Spacing may refer to: * ''Spacing'' (magazine), a Canadian magazine * Spacing effect in psychology; the opposite of cramming * The usage of spaces in typography ** Letter-spacing, the amount of space between a group of letters ** Line spacing or ...

'', Summer 2007.

External links

Toronto neighbourhoods – Wychwood Park

Houses of Wychwood Park
– Architectural Conservancy of Ontario
Wychwood Park Heritage Conservation District Plan
(1994) {{authority control Neighbourhoods in Toronto