Joseph Price and his daughter Sarah lived for most of the 1800s, in a large, redbrick,L-shaped house on a large property stretching from Yonge Street (between Rowanwood Avenue and the railway tracks) east nearly to the Don River. Yellow Creek crossed it near the south end of Baffour Park. Price named his property after his birthplace. Thornwood was a working farm, but as it was also treed, Price went into lumbering and built a sawmill on Yellow Creek. He died in 1846. Part of his land was sold to merchant William Mathers, who subsequently sold the southwest portion to David Macpherson of Chestnut Park.
Sarah, his only daughter, inherited the ten acres fronting on Yonge Street. She lived in a modest one-and-a-half-storey cottage close Yonge Street. By the 1870s, two streets occupying most of the Yonge Street frontage, Price and Grimsby, were opened and laid out with small lots for working-class housing. In 1883, when the Village of Yorkville was annexed, Miss Price’s north lot line marked the northern city limits. By 1905, the strip had become increasingly commercial. In 1912, impatient with construction delays at the new Union Station, the CPR decided to open a passenger station here to serve its cross-town line. It was replaced in June 1916 with the fine stone North Toronto Station which was used until 1929. This familiar landmark was leased later to the Liquor Control Board of Ontario. Several streets in this area such as Price Street, Pricefield Road, and Thornwood Road commemorate this family. (For more about Thornwood and its owners, see “The Estates of Old Toronto” by Liz Lundell).