Riverdale, the district east of the Don River, grew from a farm bought by the City of Toronto in 1856 from the Scadding estate. The city placed a jail and its working farm there, opened Riverdale Park on the west side of the river in 1880, and annexed the community of Riverdale in 1884. The Don Jail, designed by William Thomas, was built between 1859 and 1864.
The area’s early institutions and its public park explain why it developed later than neighborhoods closer to the lake. The accounts below come from city, park, and heritage records, and they disagree on a few dates, which are shown.
The Scadding land and the city’s purchase
The Cultural Landscape Foundation’s entry on Riverdale Park says the city acquired about 48 hectares (119 acres) of farmland in 1856 from the estate of John Scadding. The City of Toronto’s own Riverdale Farm page also dates the purchase to 1856. The Lost Rivers Walks site says the land was bought for a park and a jail farm, and that later additions brought the park to about 65 hectares (162 acres).
The Don Jail and the House of Refuge
The Ontario Heritage Trust lists construction of the Don Jail at 550 Gerrard Street East from 1859 to 1864, with William Thomas as architect, and records its designation under the Ontario Heritage Act by Bylaw 410-2000 of July 6, 2000. Sinai Health, which now uses the building, says the jail opened in 1864 with 184 cells and was then the largest reform jail in North America, and that it was Thomas’s last project before his death in 1860. A plaque text summarized on Read the Plaque states that the jail once had a prisoner-worked farm, now mostly Riverdale Park. Thomas also appears in the article on William Thomas.
One source gives a different opening year. The Lost Rivers Walks page says construction began in 1859 and the jail opened in 1865. The sources consulted do not explain the one-year gap. The Lost Rivers page also records a House of Refuge, built in 1860 for the “vagrant, the dissolute, and for idiots,” which later became the Riverdale Isolation Hospital and is now part of Bridgepoint Health.
The old jail closed in 1977 after 113 years, according to Sinai Health, although the modern wing kept operating until 2013. The plaque summary says 70 executions took place at the jail, the last in Canada on December 11, 1962.
Riverdale Park, opened 1880
The park opened to the public in 1880 on the west side of the Don River, and it expanded across the river in 1884 when Toronto annexed the community of Riverdale, according to the Cultural Landscape Foundation. The park’s valley setting links it to the wider story of the river in the article on Toronto’s lost rivers and ravines. The Lost Rivers Walks page notes that Winchester Street once ran along the south side of the Necropolis to the Don River and crossed it by a bridge, becoming Don Mills Road; the cemetery itself is covered in the article on Toronto’s historic cemeteries.
The zoo and the farm
The City of Toronto page and the Cultural Landscape Foundation both date the opening of Toronto’s first zoo, the Riverdale Zoo, to 1894. The city page adds that the Resident Zookeeper’s House was built in 1902 by prisoners of the Don Jail, and that it later served as a zoo hospital and a temporary morgue for the Necropolis. The zoo closed in 1974, when its animals moved to the new Metro Toronto Zoo in Scarborough. Riverdale Farm opened on the site on September 9, 1978, and the Francey Barn, built in Markham Township in 1858, was donated to the city in 1977. The Lost Rivers page names Riverdale Farm as the site of Toronto’s first zoo but gives no date.
Timeline
| Year | Event | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1856 | City buys the Scadding land | Cultural Landscape Foundation; City of Toronto |
| 1859 | Construction of the Don Jail begins | Ontario Heritage Trust |
| 1860 | House of Refuge built | Lost Rivers Walks |
| 1864 (or 1865) | Don Jail opens | Sinai Health; Lost Rivers Walks |
| 1880 | Riverdale Park opens west of the river | Cultural Landscape Foundation |
| 1884 | Riverdale annexed; park extends east | Cultural Landscape Foundation |
| 1894 | Riverdale Zoo opens | City of Toronto |
| 1902 | Zookeeper’s residence built by jail prisoners | City of Toronto |
Frequently asked questions
When was Riverdale annexed to Toronto?
In 1884, according to the Cultural Landscape Foundation.
Who designed the Don Jail?
William Thomas, according to the Ontario Heritage Trust and Sinai Health.
When did the Don Jail open?
Sinai Health says 1864. The Lost Rivers Walks site says 1865.
When did Riverdale Park open?
In 1880, on the west side of the Don River.
Related reading
- An overview of Toronto’s history
- William Thomas, architect of the Don Jail
- Lost rivers and ravines
- The Don Valley Brick Works
- Leslieville, the neighbor to the south
- How Toronto’s districts grew
Last verified: October 2026
Sources
- The Cultural Landscape Foundation, “Riverdale Park, Toronto”
- City of Toronto, Riverdale Farm
- Ontario Heritage Trust, Ontario Heritage Act register entry for the Don Jail
- Sinai Health, “The Historic Don Jail”
- Lost Rivers Walks, Riverdale Park
- Read the Plaque, “The Don Jail 1859-1864”
Cite this page
APA: History of Toronto. (2026, October 25). Riverdale, Toronto: Don Jail, Riverdale Park, and Annexation. https://historyoftoronto.ca/blog/riverdale-history
MLA: “Riverdale, Toronto: Don Jail, Riverdale Park, and Annexation.” History of Toronto, 25 Oct. 2026, https://historyoftoronto.ca/blog/riverdale-history. Accessed .
Chicago: History of Toronto. “Riverdale, Toronto: Don Jail, Riverdale Park, and Annexation.” Last modified October 25, 2026. https://historyoftoronto.ca/blog/riverdale-history.
The pages have no named author, so the site is given as the author. Add the date you read the page if your style asks for it.