Seven of Alderwood's streets are named for the men who ran the First World War. Foch, Jellicoe, Gort, Haig, Borden, Asquith and Lloyd George were laid out from 1918 by a developer subdividing a farm, while the war was still recent enough to be raw.
Before that it was farmland, part of the Colonel Samuel Smith tract. Streetcars reached the creek in 1895, Edgar T. Stephens subdivided in 1918 and again in 1920, and Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta followed, with thoughts of the Greek alphabet.
Built for a gun factory across the creek
The houses most people picture here went up in 1943, west of Brown's Line and south of Woodbury Road, for employees of Small Arms Limited in Lakeview, across Etobicoke Creek. They came from the Wartime Housing Corporation, which became Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation in 1946.
The Etobicoke wartime type is recorded as a storey and a half, steeply pitched roof, clapboard walls and small sash windows, one bedroom down and two above. This is the house people call a strawberry box. That description was written about the Queensway Park houses of 1945, so treat it as a family resemblance.
Two thirds of it was built before 1960
The 2016 census counted 4,615 dwellings here. Sixty-three percent predate 1960 and another 22 percent date from 1961 to 1980. Sixty-one percent are single-detached and just under eighty percent are owner-occupied.
The original houses are small and the lots they sit on are not. A wartime house or a 1950s bungalow on ground that will carry considerably more building is a standing invitation to rebuild, and Alderwood has been accepting it one address at a time. On one block you can find an untouched original, a house dormered and extended to the rear, and a full replacement.
That cuts both ways. The neighbour who has not rebuilt yet may, and the one who already has sets the ceiling for the street. I will not give you a typical frontage figure, because no reliable published source gives one. Get the survey and zoning standards for that street.
The larger sites have already turned over. The Ashfield manor house came down in 2009 for townhomes, and Alderwood Collegiate Institute on Valermo Drive, open from 1955 to 1983, was demolished in 2013 and rebuilt as low-rise housing.
Brown's Line is a decommissioned highway
Highway 427 ends at Coules Court, inside the neighbourhood, and continues south as Brown's Line. The street was once the southernmost stretch of Highway 27. That is why it looks the way it does: a wide former provincial highway of single-storey commercial buildings and plazas, with industry along its east side.
It is not a walkable main street of the kind Mimico has. Farm Boy opened a 20,000 square foot store at 841 Brown's Line in 2018. At 408 Brown's Line, City staff recommended approval of a four to six storey mixed-use building with 81 units over retail.
The civic anchors are the Alderwood Centre at 2 Orianna Drive, holding Sir Adam Beck Junior School, the library branch and the pool, and the Franklin Horner Community Centre at 432 Horner Avenue, a school of 1910 by E.J. Lennox. Catchments change, so confirm schools with the board.
- Sir Adam Beck Junior School, 544 Horner Avenue, 1921.
- Lanor Junior Middle School, 450 Lanor Avenue, 1952.
- St. Ambrose Catholic School, 20 Coules Court, 1954.
- Lakeshore Collegiate Institute, 350 Kipling Avenue, 1983.
The GO train is the commute, and it is not in Alderwood
Long Branch GO on the Lakeshore West line is roughly fifteen to twenty minutes from Union. It opened in 1967 and is the strongest transit argument for buying here. It is also outside the neighbourhood, south of the CN corridor that forms Alderwood's southern boundary.
From the southern streets that walk is short. From the northern end it is not a walk most people make in February. There is no subway station here. The 110 Islington South is the spine route, running to the Long Branch loop by way of Horner Avenue and Brown's Line, with the 44 Kipling South on the east. Both feed Line 2.
The creek decides things here
Etobicoke Creek is the western boundary, and the line between Toronto and Mississauga. The conservation authority maps six flood vulnerable clusters in that watershed, covering 508 hectares of flood plain.
In October 1954 Hurricane Hazel put the creek over its banks and seven people were killed. The destruction was on the creek flats and the streets south of the Lake Shore, in Long Branch, not in the built-up core of Alderwood. Anyone who says Alderwood flooded in Hazel without that qualification is being careless. The flats had flooded three times in five years, which is why there is a park at the creek mouth instead of streets.
Marie Curtis Park opened in 1959 on ground the flood cleared. The beach there is the westernmost of Toronto's eleven and the one most often posted as unsafe for swimming, which is worth knowing before you buy on the strength of it. There is no arena in Alderwood. The nearest is in Long Branch.
What I tell buyers to check
The wiring tells you which decade the house is from. Knob and tube was used from the early 1900s into the 1940s, which covers the wartime houses, and many insurers will not write a policy on a house that has it. Aluminum wiring was common from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s, and insurers often want an ESA Certificate of Acceptance. Get an insurance quote before conditions expire.
Test for vermiculite before you open a wall. Zonolite attic insulation came from the Libby mine in Montana, which had a natural asbestos deposit and closed only in 1990. Every house of that era is in scope, so have it tested by a professional before you renovate.
The basement is the weak point, in two ways. The wartime house had a basement, not a lower level: no egress windows, no waterproofing to a modern standard, and 1943 ceiling heights. Ask for permits on any underpinning done, and treat sewer backup as a question separate from the creek. Look the address up on the City's Basement Flooding Protection Program map.
Find out whether the address sits in a regulated area. Land bordering the creek valley, a watercourse or hazardous ground such as flood plain or slope needs a conservation authority permit to build or replace a house, add on, or put up a garage, deck or pool. TRCA publishes a regulated area search tool and a flood plain map viewer. Run both before you waive conditions.
Rail on two sides, freeway on the third. The CN corridor forms the southern boundary and carries GO service, a CP line runs the eastern flank, and the Gardiner runs along the north at eight to ten lanes. Metrolinx track work at Long Branch is intended to enable electrification and more frequent service, which raises the value and the noise together.
The industrial edge is being fought over, and Horner Avenue is being rebuilt. The south-east quadrant is zoned industrial, against the South Etobicoke employment area, which the City describes as over 44,000 jobs across 1,800 businesses. An application to convert land on Evans Avenue to housing is before the Ontario Land Tribunal. The approved plan for Horner brings a 30 km/h limit, speed humps, bike lanes and removal of most on-street parking from 2028.
Comparables are thin and the houses are not alike. Most of the stock is detached and predates 1960, so transactions are individually altered old houses, not a repeatable product. A 1943 house that has been gutted, dormered and extended is not comparable to the untouched one beside it. If you are shown a pre-construction unit here, ask hard questions about the builder.