The Bridle Path

The Bridle Path

The Bridle Path is set between the Don River Valley to the East and lush parkland to the West. Bayview Avenue is the main thoroughfare providing access through the neighbourhood and most of the shops and entertainment are located along it as well. Some of the best North Toronto schools and clubs are located in close proximity making it a wonderful well-rounded community. These include the high-end Granite Club, York Mills Shopping Centre, Crescent School for boys and The Toronto French School.

Typical property sizes are between one and six acres but by no means is that the upper limit of lot sizes as some have been assembled over time. The houses in the Bridle Path were built mostly in the 1930’s, 1950’s and 1960’s which accounts for the eclectic mix of architectural styles found here. This mix of designs includes Georgian, Colonial, Greek and Tudor Revival, Italianate, Neo Gothic, California bungalows and futuristic modernist style homes. The typical Bridle Path estate offers a wide range of luxury features, ranging from pools, tennis courts, gazebos and cabanas, to greenhouses and waterfalls.

Bridle Path residents can walk to beautiful Edwards Gardens which is the home of the Toronto Botanical Garden , one of Canada’s finest public gardening resource centres. Edwards Gardens contains rockeries, perennial gardens, a pond, waterfalls, a rose garden and the beginning of a nine kilometre paved trail that extends through the Don River Valley all the way to Warden Woods Park in Scarborough.

History

The original settlement which turned into The Bridle Path was originally inhabited by Alexander Milne from 1827 onwards, on what is now Edwards Gardens. Milne operated wool and saw mills on the banks of Wilket Creek. The Bridle Path was farmland until the 1930’s when the Bayview Bridge was built making the area appropriate for residential development. A Toronto-based land developer, Hubert Daniel Bull Page was the first developer to come into the neighbourhood and envision the area as a place for large estate homes of Toronto’s elite. The first home built in the area was a Cape Cod Colonial style home at 2 The Bridle Path. This was meant as a model home to inspire residents to the area. The earliest plans for the neighbourhood included equestrian paths which account for the wide roads since paved over, and the spacing of the parcels of land.