Left vacant for future growth was the land between Oak and Ontario south of King Edward Avenue. Only golf courses--the 1912 Shaughnessy links at 37th and Oak and the 1926 Langara links southeast of 49th and Cambie--intruded their groomed presence into the marshy alder scrub which had replaced the logged-off forest. Down narrow Oak Street ran the No. 17 streetcar, a notably bumpy line established in 1912 to connect Marpole with the built-up city. Cambie Street was graded only as far south as Little Mountain.

Although it delayed opening the area between Oak and Ontario for housing, the CPR did sell tracts of land to a number of civic and private institutions. Western Residential Schools purchased property to the east of Shaughnessy Golf Course and erected two large boarding schools--Braemar and Langara--in the Tudor style of the architects Maclure and Fox. Langara, at 4949 Heather Street, survives today as an RCMP training facility. Shaughnessy Hospital opened on Oak Street in 1919; it was followed in the late 1920s by the Salvation Army's Grace Hospital, and in the late 1930s by St. Vincent's Hospital at 33rd and Heather. The area south of 41st Avenue remained bushland, and was sufficiently remote for the Vancouver Gun Club's rifle range, which operated there until the early 1950s.

As prosperity returned in the late 1930s, the CPR planned to open its property to development, but World War II intervened. Instead the land between Heather and Cambie south of 37th became an army training camp, dubbed "Little Aldershot," for the duration of the war years.

The name "Oakridge" was first applied to B.C. Electric's new trolley depot at 41st and Oak, which opened in 1949. The new trolleys replaced the poorly maintained streetcar system; one of the more symbolic casualties was the "teeth-rattler" No. 17 line, which had its last run in April 1952. Oak Street, so dusty and bumpy that "no Saskatchewan road could be worse," was repaved as soon as the old tram tracks were ripped up.

The stage was set for the creation of a new Oakridge community. After the war the city's Jewish community moved from its former Strathcona enclave and began to settle along Oak Street. The Jewish Community Centre was erected at the corner of 41st and Oak, and the blocks to the east soon became Vancouver's Jewish neighborhood.

In postwar Vancouver a new style of suburbia became fashionable--wider streets, open landscaping, and low-lying, wood-sided bungalows and split-levels. In the heyday of this style the CPR made plans to subdivide the 112 hectares bounded by Oak, Cambie, 41st and 57th. Announced in 1955, the Oakridge community featured 24-metre-wide single family housing lots, many on curving streets, and a small apartment area, next to which was proposed a large shopping mall with Woodward's department store as the anchor tenant.

The Oakridge Shopping Centre opened in 1959 and instantly attracted customers from the surrounding neighborhoods; it contributed, at least in the short term, to the decline of the old shopping areas in Kerrisdale, south Main Street and especially Marpole. Within twenty years, however, the Oakridge mall had itself been left behind, as new malls opened throughout the region and shoppers ranged farther and farther afield. To regain its customers, Oakridge was extensively renovated in 1984. More apartments have been added to the surrounding blocks, making them popular with seniors.

Although it was one of the last areas of Vancouver to be developed, Oakridge has been substantially redeveloped already. The original houses in the area were quite luxurious in their day but too small for the expansive lifestyles of the late 1980s and 1990s. New, large homes in the area have found wealthy buyers, including many Chinese attracted to the local schools and convenient location. Oakridge today is a luxurious family area, an extension eastward of Kerrisdale and Shaughnessy rather than one westward from the Main Street and South Vancouver neighborhoods.