page_title: West Hill, Toronto
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: West Hill, Toronto / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Melville Church in West Hill, a neighbourhood of Scarborough, Toronto. Built in 1851, it is located on 70 Old Kingston Road.
context_page_description: West Hill is a neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located in the eastern end of the city, in the suburb of Scarborough. It is roughly bounded by Scarborough Golf Club Road and a branch of Highland Creek on the west, the CNR railway tracks and Lake Ontario on the south, and Highland Creek on the north-east. The name comes from its elevated position on the west side of Highland Creek, a deep glacial ravine.
  The section east of Manse Road, which roughly splits this neighbourhood in half, is often now referred to as the Manse Valley neighbourhood. It has less commercial development and more industrial development than the western part of the neighbourhood. However, both parts were treated as part of West Hill prior to development.
context_section_description: In the mid 19th century, what is now West Hill was part of the larger Highland Creek community, which extended from today's Galloway Rd over to the Pickering border.  In 1862, Eli Shackleton took over as postmaster in Highland Creek and moved the post office from the east side of the Highland Creek valley to the west. Following Shackleton's tenure as postmaster, the post office was relocated back to the east side of the valley.  In 1879, John Richardson opened a new post office on the west side of the valley officially known as "West Hill".  From 1906 until the closing of the line in 1936, West Hill was the eastern terminus of the Toronto and Scarborough Electric Railway, a street-car line. West Hill Public School is one of the oldest in Toronto, a school having been built on the present site in the 1880s, although the original building was replaced by a modern facility in 1994.  West Hill Collegiate Institute is also an older high school in Scarborough, having been opened in 1955.
  Until after World War II, West Hill was largely rural, although the stretch of Kingston Road (including what is now Old Kingston Road) running through it had some commercial development, some even dating back to the late 19th century. The neighbourhood's oldest remaining buildings tend to be along this stretch.
  In the 1950s the neighbourhood was still difficult to reach by road, except for access to the south-west towards the city because even at this point Kingston Road was a four-lane highway.  However, access to the direct east and west had to navigate Highland Creek and required a steep descent and ascent. There was no access across the creek across Morningside. However, the main bus commuter bus route from downtown Toronto to Oshawa ran directly along Kingston Road as well. As such, early development in the neighbourhood clustered around Kingston Road starting in the 1950s. The first subdivisions stretched along the straight north-south roads running off  Kingston Road, primarily those existing road allowances which were close together and allowed for back-to-back lots with minimum frontage and depth. Larger plots of land that were developed in the late 1950s through the 1970s tended to be laid out with curved roads, short connecting roads and dead end streets that made for quieter neighbourhoods but resulted in irregular lot sizes.
caption: Melville Church in West Hill, near Highland Creek. The building was erected in 1851.
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