Riversdale

Riversdale is a vibrant neighbourhood found in the heart of Saskatoon, offering a downtown lifestyle with small-town values. One of the first initial settlements of Saskatoon, it boasts a rich cultural heritage infused with a young, trendy energy, and is home to about 2,500 people with an average home price of just over $214,000.

The first record of settlement in the Riversdale area was in the 1890s when the area was homesteaded. It was dubbed "Richville" after one of the original settlers. The village of Riversdale was incorporated on January 16, 1905. The village plan (originally called "Riverdale") had narrower streets, smaller lots, and no public reserve land. Faced with a heavy influx of settlers, Riversdale joined with the towns of Saskatoon and Nutana to become the City of Saskatoon on July 1, 1906.

Immigration from central and eastern Europe brought new and ethnically diverse peoples to Riversdale around 1908. Many British, German, Ukrainian and Chinese families took up residence. Saskatoon's Chinatown moved into the Riversdale district in the early 1930s. Originally, Chinese immigrants set up businesses along 19th Street east of the CN tracks, in what is now the south downtown.

The mid-60s saw First Nations people moving off of reserves and into Riversdale – the most recent statistics show that 43% of the population identifies as being of First Nations origin. Vietnamese and Hong Kong Chinese immigrants also began arriving at this time.

Riversdale's image struggled since the 1960s, with a sizeable portion of the population living below the poverty line. The social ills that accompany poverty – substance abuse, violent crime and dilapidated housing – often cast the area in a negative light. By 2009 there was evidence of gentrification occurring in the area, including the River Landing development and the demolition of the historic but run-down Barry Hotel being cited as examples of the neighbourhood's changing character. By 2014, new businesses occupied nearly all of the available rental space.

The neighbourhood's school, Princess Alexandra, closed in June 2022 to prepare for the construction of City Centre School, which is an amalgamation of Princess Alexandra School, King George School, and Pleasant Hill School.