required a steep descent and ascent. There was no access across the creek across Morningside. However, the main bus commuter bus route from downtown Toronto to Oshawa ran directly along Kingston Road as well. As such, early development in the neighbourhood clustered around Kingston Road starting in the 1950s. The first subdivisions stretched along the straight north–south roads running off Kingston Road, primarily those existing road allowances which were close together and allowed for back-to-back lots with minimum frontage and depth. Larger plots of land that were developed in the late 1950s through the 1970s tended to be laid out with curved roads, short connecting roads and dead end streets that made for quieter neighbourhoods but resulted in irregular lot sizes. Development (1960–present) Before the completion of Highway 401 in the 1960s, West Hill was one of the major shopping areas in the region. In the 1950s, it served communities as far away as Oshawa. However, as development spread east and north along the new highway, major commercial developments became less viable. A major regional shopping centre, Morningside Mall, built in the late 1970s, was left without a major tenant when Wal-Mart, Dominion, and Shoppers Drug Mart abandoned the mall. Morningside Mall was completely demolished as of late 2007, and has been replaced by Morningside Crossing, a plaza. Another change occasioned by the building of Highway 401 was a drop in business for the large number of motels lining Kingston Road. Most of the motel sites have been redeveloped as commercial sites, and many of the remaining motels serve as temporary housing for Toronto's homeless. The neighbourhood grew quickly and by the mid-1960s there were several new public schools to serve the new residents, who were generally young families drawn to the lower home prices in the area. The area's K-6 and K-8 public schools, Galloway Road, Eastview, Peter Secor, William G. Miller, and Heron Park, were all built in this period, as was the separate school, St. Martin de Porres. By the 1970s, two technical high schools, Sir Robert Borden and Maplewood, had joined West Hill C.I., as did Joseph Brant, a senior public school that accepted grades 7-8 from three feeder schools. At the times of the earliest developments, sanitary sewer service had not been extended this far east. House lots generally had to be large to accommodate septic tanks. Development was largely limited to single family homes