Crescent Town


Crescent Town is a neighbourhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in the former borough of East York. It is located near Victoria Park Avenue and Danforth Avenue. It mainly consists of high-rise apartment complexes, built originally to take advantage of the opening of the adjacent Victoria Park subway station, which connects to the central quadrangle via a partially covered walkway.

History

Crescent Town was founded in 1887 when Walter Massey, the son of Hart Massey, Canada's first major industrialist, purchased a 240-acre country property centered on Dawes Road and Victoria Park Avenue. The Massey farm was named Dentonia after Mrs. Massey's family whose surname was Denton. The Massey farm sold fresh eggs and poultry as well as fresh trout which was caught in the many streams and rivulets that criss-crossed the farm. The Massey farm was also the home of the City Dairy Company which produced the first pasteurized milk in Canada.
In 1933, Susan Massey generously gave 40 acres of the Dentonia farm to Crescent School where her grandsons were educated. Crescent School operated at Dentonia until 1969 when this property was sold to the developers who built the present day Crescent Town neighbourhood.
Hollywood actor Kiefer Sutherland of the television series 24 was a Crescent Town resident. He spent part of his childhood in Crescent Town and attended the Crescent Town Elementary School, where he first met former Mayor of Toronto, David Miller.

Current status

Crescent Town is considered by some as an interesting experiment in community planning in that all of its pedestrian walkways are located above the street level. It is a multicultural neighbourhood, whose population includes extensive numbers of Bangladeshi, Indian, Jamaican, Pakistani and Tamil Canadians. There are many Bangladeshi-owned businesses near the neighbourhood. Some of the buildings are condominiums, while others are rental apartments. Toronto council classified Oakridge under Taylor-Massey as a neighborhood improvement area in 2014