page_title: Humber Valley Village
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Humber Valley Village / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Home of Etobicoke developer Robert Home Smith at Edenbridge and Edenbrook, near Royal York.
context_page_description: Humber Valley Village is a neighbourhood located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is within the former City of Etobicoke and is a relatively affluent community. The boundaries are from Dundas Street on the south to Islington Avenue to the west, Eglinton Avenue to the north, and the Humber River in the east. The neighbourhood is in the political riding of Etobicoke Centre.
context_section_description: Although laid-out in farm lots by 1805, most of the lots were purchased by some of Etobicoke's early great land owners who lived elsewhere in the township leaving this part of the Humber Valley little developed with no homes along what became Royal York Road from Dundas north to Eglinton.  The Iroquois shoreline, remnant of the ancient Lake Iroquois, which forms an escarpment along Dundas in Etobicoke, turns far to the north in this area, cut away by the Humber River creating the Humber Valley. 
  The western extension of St. Clair Avenue (now called Rathburn in Etobicoke) ran through the centre of the area and it was near this point the local developer Robert Home Smith built his home 'Edenbridge' (named after a village in southern England) overlooking the Humber Valley, at the turn of the century, after purchasing much of the surrounding land.  To the west of Royal York another early resident, Frederick James, in 1908 developed his 'Red Gables' estate as a large landscaped park which, as the 'James Garden' landscaped park, remains today.  While Robert Home Smith developed land in The Kingsway neighbourhood to the south, the new 'Edenbridge' area was resurveyed and subdivided for development by Smith's company more slowly as the 'Humber Valley Surveys'; construction starting in the mid 1930s and continuing after Smith's death in 1935, until the 1960s.  This 30-year span produced many different styles of home as fashions changed, leading to a very different style of development than originally envisioned by Robert Home Smith.  The designs include: Georgian, Colonial, Tudor, English Cottage, Cape Cod, ranch bungalows, split-level, contemporary and modernist .
caption: Robert Home Smith's estate at Edenbridge and Edenbrook, 1930
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