The former school is situated at the Vaughan Road and Winona Drive intersection, close to Oakwood Avenue.

Construction of VRCI began in July 1926 and the cornerstone was laid by Lieutenant-Governor Henry Cockshutt in September 1926.

In 1997, the school was renamed Vaughan Road Academy, and began offering advanced academic, arts and athletic programs.

A section of Vaughan Road Academy is used as a community daycare centre as well, even after the school's closure.

Many students who live in the school's catchment area end up attending other nearby high schools such as Forest Hill Collegiate Institute to the east, which is overcapacity, as well as the nearby Oakwood Collegiate Institute to the south, which is absorbing most of the remaining students and programs.

Vaughan Road Academy had interscholastic and intramural teams for badminton, ball hockey, baseball, basketball, cricket, cross country running, flag football, hockey, soccer, softball, swimming, table tennis, tennis, track and field and volleyball and knuckleballs.

Vaughan Road Academy had a large and active Queer-Straight Alliance until the school's closure in 2017.

The school motto was a quote from the fourth book of Vergil's Georgics, which describes the behaviour and society of bees: In Medium Quaesita Reponunt, which means "They lay up in store for common use whatever they have gained".

[citation needed] VRA from above appeared as a near-isosceles right angle triangle with enclosed courtyard (in which a daycare for Vaughan Road students' children operates) of the same shape; the overall aerial view's reminiscence of The Pentagon lending the building the moniker "The Triagon".