The Distillery District takes its name from the Gooderham and Worts Distillery, founded in 1832 by James Worts and his brother-in-law William Gooderham. By the 1870s it had grown into the largest distillery in the British Empire, and the Victorian industrial complex it left behind — a dense collection of over 40 brick buildings in Romanesque Revival and industrial vernacular styles — is now the largest and best-preserved collection of Victorian-era industrial architecture in North America.

After decades of dormancy following the distillery's closure in 1990, the site was redeveloped as a pedestrian-only arts, culture, and entertainment district opening in 2003. It has become one of Toronto's most visited destinations, home to galleries, theatres, restaurants, and the Toronto Christmas Market. Its cobblestone laneways and intact 19th-century industrial fabric give it a physical character unlike anywhere else in the city — a rare case where preservation and adaptive reuse produced something genuinely irreplaceable rather than merely nostalgic.