History of Yorkville: From Hippie Village to Luxury District

The history of Yorkville Toronto — from its 1830 founding and 1883 annexation, through Canada's 1960s hippie capital, to today's luxury condos and designer Mink Mile.

Today's Yorkville — Hermès, hotel spas, glass towers, and valet everything — would absolutely baffle a time traveler from 1968, who'd remember it as a haze of folk music, coffee houses, and patchouli. The neighbourhood has lived several lives: a separate village, a quiet Victorian suburb, the beating heart of Canada's counterculture, and finally one of North America's priciest retail strips. It's one of the great urban glow-ups, and the story is far stranger than the storefronts let on.

Yorkville was founded in 1830 by brewer Joseph Bloore (yes — Bloor Street is named after him) and developer William Botsford Jarvis, as a separate village north of the young city of Toronto. It grew as a leafy residential suburb with its own town hall and identity, until Toronto's expansion swallowed it: Yorkville was annexed to the city in 1883. Look closely today and you'll still spot Victorian houses and narrow streets peeking out between the modern infill — the village bones are still there under the designer skin.

For a long stretch — roughly the 1880s through the 1950s — Yorkville was an unremarkable, comfortable residential pocket of brick homes and small shops. No drama, no headlines, just a neighbourhood doing neighbourhood things. Which makes what happened next all the more delightful, because nothing about its sleepy first century hinted that it was about to become the most famous bohemian address in the country.

In the 1960s, Yorkville exploded into the epicentre of Canada's hippie and folk movement — the country's answer to Greenwich Village or Haight-Ashbury. At its peak, the area reportedly hosted dozens of coffee houses and clubs (somewhere around 40), with legendary spots like The Purple Onion and the Riverboat drawing crowds who came for cheap coffee and live music until the early hours. The streets filled with artists, students, draft dodgers, and anyone allergic to the buttoned-up establishment.

Toronto Boutique Apartments home · Search availability · View this page