The house was located on 82 acres of farmland that British settler John Taylor purchased in 1831 at the Forks of the Don Valley, in present-day E.T.

It was originally farmed by Parshall Terry, with settlement records for Thorncliffe Park going back to 1800, just seven years after the founding of the Town of York.

[5] By 1888, a prominent Toronto businessperson and Taylor son-in-law named Robert T. Davies had purchased 600 acres of land including the original family home, Thorn Cliff.

The neighbourhood embodies some standard urban planning ideas of the era – high concentrations of similar housing types, strict separation of retail and residential development, and the assumption that everyone has a car.

Retail establishments were concentrated in a single shopping mall, now called the East York Town Centre, between the two arms of Thorncliffe Park Drive at Overlea Boulevard.

Many residents on Thorncliffe Park Drive are at considerable walking distance from shops, although this problem is mitigated somewhat, even in winter, by well kept sidewalks and walkways and by frequent bus service.

Some of Thorncliffe Park's street names commemorate a former racetrack located there, or recognize the Town of Leaside's role in the development of the new community.

The top 10 non-English mother tongues are Urdu (24.4%), Pashto (5.1%), Tagalog (Filipino) (4.7%), Persian (4.6%), Gujarati (4.1%), Arabic (3.5%), Bengali (2%), Greek (1.5%), Punjabi (1.4%), and Spanish (1.4%).

[23] Reconstruction is planned for the 2022-2025 period as part of the Renewing Overlea Boulevard project and will included widened sidewalks, the addition of cycle tracks and public art.