Downtown Whitby

Downtown Whitby is the original town around the Four Corners, where Brock Street (Highway 12) crosses Dundas Street (Highway 2). The TRREB community covers roughly the area from Highway 401 north to Rossland Road, between about Annes Street and Cochrane Street on the west and Garden Street on the east. Everything south of the 401 is Port Whitby, and Pringle Creek starts east of Garden Street.

The core blocks east and west of Brock Street, on Byron, Centre, Athol, Green, Perry, Colborne and Mary streets, carry the town's oldest housing: Italianate, Gothic Revival and Queen Anne houses from the 1850s to the 1900s, many listed on the Town's heritage register and some inside the Werden's Plan Heritage Conservation District. A ring of 1920s to 1940s bungalows and one-and-a-half-storeys follows, then 1950s and 1960s subdivisions of bungalows and split-levels toward the 401 and out to Garden Street. North toward Rossland Road the stock turns to 1970s and 1980s two-storeys and semis. Condominiums are a real option here, unlike most of Whitby: low-rise apartment buildings from the 1980s and 1990s on and near Dundas and Brock, newer mid-rise projects along Dundas Street, and stacked and freehold townhouses on infill sites. Lots in the old grid are narrow but deep, often with a detached garage reached by a mutual driveway, and a few blocks still have rear lanes.

This is the one Whitby community where a car is optional for daily life. PULSE 900 runs along Dundas Street about every ten minutes at peak, linking downtown to Ajax, Pickering, Scarborough and downtown Oshawa, and routes 302 on Brock Street, 319 on Garden Street and 301 on Annes Street all end at Whitby GO, a short ride south of the 401. Trains on the Lakeshore East line leave every fifteen minutes on weekdays and take about an hour to Union Station, and GO buses serve the station too. Drivers reach Highway 401 at Brock Street in a couple of minutes, and Highway 12 north through Brooklin meets the 407. Walking is easy on the grid, and the Waterfront Trail and Whitby Harbour are a bike ride down Brock Street. Parking downtown mixes free short-term street spaces with municipal lots behind the storefronts.

The public board serves the old town with E.A. Fairman Public School on Walnut Street West, Julie Payette Public School on Garden Street, which offers French immersion from grade 1, and Sir William Stephenson Public School on Athol Street near the 401. Secondary students head to Henry Street High School, which follows a modified balanced calendar, or Anderson Collegiate on Anderson Street, home to the gifted and French immersion programs. Catholic families are assigned to St. John the Evangelist on Giffard Street or a neighbouring Durham Catholic elementary school, with Father Leo J. Austin as the Catholic high school. Trafalgar Castle School, the independent girls' school on Reynolds Street, is downtown's landmark private option. School boundaries are set by the boards and change, so verify the catchment with each board before you rely on it.

Daily life happens on foot. Brock Street South holds most of the restaurants, pubs and a craft brewery, Dundas Street carries banks, bakeries and the Whitby Public Library's central branch, which opened in 2005 beside Celebration Square, and the Whitby Farmers' Market sets up there on summer Wednesdays. Peel Park and the small parks tucked into the grid give the old town its green space, the Whitby Courthouse Theatre performs in the 1854 courthouse, and the Station Gallery and the harbour are a short ride south. Groceries sit at the edges: plazas on Dundas Street West near Annes Street and on Dundas Street East toward Garden Street, with the larger stores at Thickson and Dundas. Lakeridge Health's Whitby site on Gordon Street handles rehabilitation, dialysis and clinics rather than emergencies, so the nearest emergency department is Lakeridge Health Oshawa. Whitby Town Hall on Rossland Road East is a few minutes north.

Downtown Whitby suits people who would rather walk to coffee, dinner and the bus than own a second car, buyers who love a Victorian porch and are willing to live with old plaster and the odd knob-and-tube surprise, and downsizers who want a condo within a block of the library and the market. It suits fewer people who want a new house with a double garage, since new construction here means condos and infill, and families who need a big level yard will find the old lots narrow. Brock Street nightlife brings weekend noise to the nearest blocks, and heritage rules limit exterior changes on designated homes.