Kensington / Hillhurst Homes for Sale — Calgary Real Estate

The neighbourhood

Hillhurst is one of Calgary's oldest communities. Felix McHugh established the first homestead on this side of the Bow River in 1883, and the area was annexed by the city in 1907, when 25-foot lots sold for around $300 apiece. Rancher Ezra Riley, who later acquired the McHugh land, donated the 20 acres that became Riley Park — still the community's green heart more than a century on.

What sets Hillhurst apart today is Kensington, the business district that straddles the Hillhurst–Sunnyside boundary along Kensington Road and 10th Street NW. It has kept an independent streak that most Calgary retail strips lost long ago: Pages Books on Kensington, the Plaza Theatre repertory cinema, a decades-old record shop, Hexagon Board Game Cafe, the Kensington Pub, Winebar Kensington and a deep bench of coffee shops and brunch spots. It reads less like a shopping district and more like a small town's main street that happens to sit five minutes from a downtown core.

Homes & streets

Hillhurst's housing stock tells its age honestly, and that is much of the appeal. The streets between Kensington Road and Riley Park still carry early-1900s character homes on the narrow lots surveyed when the community was annexed — some lovingly restored, many renovated and added onto over the decades. Alongside them, decades of inner-city demand have brought contemporary infills, both detached and semi-detached, so a single block often runs from a front-porch Edwardian to a flat-roofed modern build.

Closer to the river and along the 10th Street and Kensington Road spine, the form shifts to apartments and condos — a mix of older walk-ups and newer low- and mid-rise condo buildings that put owners directly above the shops and a short walk from the train. The result is unusual range for one community: entry-level apartments, townhomes, character houses and large new infills all within the same postal walk.

Hillhurst proper is bounded by the Bow River to the south, 10th Street NW to the east, 8th Avenue NW to the north and 18th Street NW to the west; the Kensington district itself spills east across 10th Street into neighbouring Sunnyside, and in practice residents treat the two as one walkable whole.

Getting around

Few Calgary communities are less car-dependent. Sunnyside CTrain station, on the Red Line just east of 10th Street NW, has anchored the district since the northwest leg opened in 1987 — it is the first stop north of downtown's free-fare zone, which makes the commute into the core a matter of minutes. Several bus routes run through the district along 10th Street and Kensington Road.

For walkers and cyclists, the Bow River pathway runs along the community's southern edge, and the Peace Bridge — Santiago Calatrava's pedestrian and cycling bridge, opened in 2012 — connects the north-bank pathway directly to downtown's west end. Many residents genuinely walk to work. Drivers are minutes from the core via the 10th Street and 14th Street bridges, with SAIT up the hill and the University of Calgary a short drive northwest.

Parks, schools & daily life

Riley Park is the kind of park most neighbourhoods wish they had: a cricket pitch that hosts league play, a summer wading pool, a playground, and the Senator Patrick Burns Memorial Rock Garden, terraced in the 1950s with flagstone salvaged from the senator's demolished mansion. Summer brings free concerts on the lawns. Prince's Island Park sits just across the river for bigger festivals.

The Hillhurst Sunnyside Community Association is one of the city's most active, running a farmers' market plus regular flea and antique markets, daycare and out-of-school care, fitness and seniors' programming, and community gardens from its hall on the Sunnyside side of the district.

Schools are close and genuinely walkable. Hillhurst School, a small CBE elementary built in 1912, sits directly beside Riley Park; Queen Elizabeth School, built in 1957, serves elementary students from Hillhurst and West Hillhurst; and Queen Elizabeth High School covers grades 7 through 12 for the surrounding inner-northwest communities. Catholic French immersion is available at Madeleine d'Houet School in neighbouring West Hillhurst. Daily errands stay local too, with a Safeway and the Sunnyside Natural Market in the district.

Who it suits

Kensington / Hillhurst suits people who measure a home by what they can reach without driving: downtown professionals, students and staff at SAIT and the U of C, retirees who want restaurants and a cinema at the end of the block, and families who like small schools and a park with a wading pool. It rewards buyers who value character and location over lot size — streets are lively, especially on summer weekends, and yards are modest by suburban standards. For anyone who has been waiting for a reason to own one car, or none, this is the neighbourhood that makes it plausible.