Victorian brick warehouses on cobbled lanes closed to cars, and the buildings Chicago used as Cook County Jail.
What Distillery District looks like
The Distillery District is a cluster of about forty brick and stone buildings on ten car-free lanes on the east side of downtown Toronto. Cobblestone paving runs the length of every lane, with no curbs or road markings to break it up.
Cast iron loading doors and overhead catwalks are still bolted to several of the walls, sized for freight rather than foot traffic. Pitched roofs, chimney stacks and stepped parapets break up the skyline above the brick. Round arched window openings run in rows along the fronts, with green painted frames. The buildings date from 1859 to 1927, in red brick and cut stone with a matching cornice line down each block.
is the widest of the lanes and runs south from Mill Street to a parking area, wide enough to double as a public square on market days. Tank House Lane and Case Goods Lane are narrower service lanes walled in brick on both sides. Small shops and galleries fill the ground floors behind arched doorways, their signs mounted straight onto the brick rather than hung on separate awnings.
The stands off Trinity Street in the same red brick and stone, its arched openings and loading bays intact along the side facing the lane. Condominium towers rise past the roofline within a block of the district's north edge, visible above the older buildings in a wide shot.
Shot in Distillery District
The Gooderham and Worts complex sat vacant through most of the 1990s, and productions used the empty buildings as a ready-made set. More than 800 film and television productions have shot in the Distillery District since 1990.
Chicago, 2002
The Fermenting Cellar Building
Played Cook County Jail, Chicago, Illinois, 1924
Rob Marshall shot Chicago entirely around Toronto rather than in Chicago. The film needed a stage deeper than most real theatres allow, so the production built its Onyx Theatre, prison and courtroom sets inside the old Gooderham and Worts complex. The Fermenting Cellar Building's exterior plays Cook County Jail, including the prison yard scene where the inmate Hunyak is hanged. Trinity Street, altered with visual effects, is the street down which Roxie is driven away in a police wagon after shooting her lover.
X-Men, 2000
Played a concentration camp gate, Auschwitz, Poland, 1944
X-Men filmed its opening scenes in the Gooderham and Worts complex on Mill Street while the buildings still stood derelict and empty. Young Erik Lehnsherr discovers his powers at a concentration camp gate in the prologue. Wolverine is later found in a cage fighting bar the film sets in northern Alberta, shot in the same complex. The camp set is now the patio of the restaurant El Catrin Destileria, at 18 Tank House Lane.
Victorian brick warehouses with overhead iron catwalks bridging the lane give Shad Thames nearly the same shape as the Distillery District, cobblestone paving included. Round arched window openings repeat down the block in the same rhythm as the Toronto complex. Shad Thames buildings run five and six storeys against the Distillery District's three and four. A level, tight frame hides the difference better than a wide shot. Tower Bridge in the background gives the real location away instantly. Try searching iron catwalk brick warehouses now.
Cobblestone paving under brick warehouse walls matches the Distillery District's own lanes, and Front Street and Water Street carry the same scale of loft buildings with the same era of round arched openings. Cast iron loading doors survive on several of the DUMBO fronts, the same detail the Toronto lanes still carry. The Manhattan Bridge crosses overhead in most wide shots and glass towers rise past the roofline within a block, so a lane level frame that keeps the sky out works better than a wide establishing shot. Try searching cobblestone brick warehouse lane now.
The Historic Third Ward's flat roofed brick warehouses share the same turn of the century scale as the Distillery District, block after block of unbroken brick fronts. Round arched openings and cast iron loading doors survive along several streets, the same details a scout would look for here. Modern asphalt has replaced the cobblestones and the streets run wider than the Distillery District's lanes, so a tight shot along one building face reads better than anything that takes in the street itself. Try searching flat roofed brick warehouses now.
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