Toronto's Distillery District: Consumption and Nostalgia in a Post-Industrial Landscape

This paper explores the adaptive reuse of the Gooderham and Worts Distillery, a 13-acre historical site located adjacent to downtown Toronto. It asks what our fascination with industrial ruins tells us about North American and European cities in the twenty-first century. The transformation of the world's largest distillery into an upscale leisure destination illustrates many of the forces that are reconfiguring cities: commodification, gentrification, the city as theme park and spectacle, post-industrialism, and the consumer preferences of the creative class. But it would be wrong to dismiss the Distillery District simply as a Disneyified version of industrial history. Whereas typical urban entertainment destinations are places that 'synergize' nationally branded products, chain restaurants, and multiplex movie theatres, the Distillery District is a site for serious theatre, art galleries, and local artisanal production. The image promoted by the Distillery District could be described as the commodification of decommodification. Drawing on the concepts of nostalgia and ruin, this article suggests that the Distillery District is best understood not only as a strategy for maximizing the returns on investment capital but also as a cultural response to globalization and de-industrialization.