page_title: Lawrence Park, Toronto
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Lawrence Park, Toronto / History
caption_attribution_description: Aerial of Bayview and Lawrence Avenues from the southwest, Toronto, Canada
context_page_description: Lawrence Park is a neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is bordered by Yonge Street to the west and Bayview Avenue to the east, and from Blythwood Ravine on the south to Lawrence Avenue on the north. Lawrence Park was one of Toronto's first planned garden suburbs. Begun in the early part of the 20th century, it did not fully develop until after the Second World War. It was ranked the wealthiest neighbourhood in all of Canada in 2011.
  Centred on Mount Pleasant Road, the neighbourhood grew slowly with medium-sized houses on narrow but deep lots. There are few commercial businesses within walking distance. The closest grocery stores are close to Yonge and Lawrence.
  In its early years, the neighbourhood's transportation was served predominantly by the northern section of the Toronto Transportation Commission's Yonge streetcar line. When the Yonge subway opened to Eglinton in 1954, the TTC replaced this service with trolley buses on Yonge Street and Mount Pleasant Road, both terminating at the Eglinton station.
context_section_description: The assembly of Lawrence Park began in 1907 by the Dovercourt Land Building and Saving Company, which acquired the north parcel of the park from John Lawrence, after whom this neighbourhood is named. The president of the Dovercourt Land Company was Wilfred Servington Dinnick. It was under Dinnick's direction that Lawrence Park was developed as a suburb for the "well to do".
  In the early years Howard and Lorrie Dunington-Grubb, who later founded Sheridan Nurseries, undertook much of the landscape architecture for the boulevards and parks of the suburb. They also took commissions for garden design from the owners of the new homes.
  The first advertisement for Lawrence Park trumpeted it as an ""aristocratic neighbourhood", "four hundred feet above Lake Ontario, and Far from the Lake Winds in Winter". However, Lawrence Park's development was sporadic. The building of houses was interrupted by two world wars, a recession and a depression, and the neighbourhood was completed only in the 1950s.
caption: View of Bayview and Lawrence Avenue from the southwest, c. 1930.
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