A well-aged building in Toronto’s Distillery District ready to savor

There is electricity, but it is still very dark here. That’s partly because the dozens of green-painted metal shutters keep sunlight out, but there’s also the question of that deep chasm – or would it be better described as a yawning void? – which takes up most of the interior of this red-brick beast.

A void so dark that one begins to think of the darkness in one’s own heart? Maybe not today, but if a person stood on those wide, well-worn planks 35 years ago and sampled the wares contained within the building, well, maybe they would have.

And that’s the problem: the gaping six-story “emptiness” contained within Rack House D in Toronto’s Distillery District is only a void if you’re a human. For a Gooderham & Worts whiskey barrel, the intricate, bolted latticework of thick Douglas fir beams would have been quite comfortable and hospitable. And, from the day it opened in the 1890s until it closed in 1990, the David Roberts Jr.-designed warehouse — Mr. Roberts also designed Toronto’s famous “Flatiron” building for the Gooderhams — was a beehive of creaking, groaning activity that involved winches and pulleys, barrels so heavy they left permanent scars in the masonry, and an intricate shelving system only a mathematician could love.

“They would run them here for however long, whether it’s two or five years,” says Andrew Pruss, principal at ERA Architects, of the barrels. “And they had to rotate them from time to time, and the guys would move everything by hand – they would lift them in the racks [and] they would walk along these walkways between the two.

“It’s a bit like a management system, but based on manual labor.”

Mr. Pruss has worked on the distillery’s heritage for so long that he walks confidently in semi-darkness, a path lit only by the thin blue light of his smartphone. However, Dr Steve Gupta, Chairman of Easton’s Hotel Group, Mario Angelucci, Easton’s Executive Director of Development and Planning, and Architect Mansoor Kazerouni (Global Buildings Director at IBI Group) walk with the same caution that one would use on a Lac gel. This is the case of this writer, and his friend the filmmaker Robert Fantinatto, who is there to take pictures: it is also the penguins’ walk.

It’s definitely cold enough for a penguin here.

Over the next three years, however, Dr. Gupta and his team will transform Rack House D into one of the trendiest hotels in town, a Curio by Hilton to be exact. And one of the main reasons why it will become such a hot spot is that the entire heritage part will be accessible to the public. No private rooms here: just a grand lobby, a bit of a backyard, and bookable meeting rooms.

“We thought it would be great to create these large volumes…and get a better sense of how these walls were constructed and the fenestration pattern,” says Kazerouni. “You can come and sit in the lobby, you can come to the restaurant, have a coffee, have a meal, go up to the rooftop bar [on the] 31st floor – a unique view of the distillery that does not exist today.

And, with the exception of a few Airbnb suites in the condo tower, it’s worth noting that in the Distillery District’s nearly two decades of existence — and despite the tourist crowds it draws — it never there has never been a hotel here. There have been rumors of chain stores and a few failed attempts, sure, but nothing concrete – pardon the pun – so far. And it’s because of the complexity of keeping Rack House D upright, in situ, as the shelving system (which supports some of the building’s weight) is removed and meticulously cataloged, and then, after a tower is placed at the above and five levels hollowed out below, taking the time and money to turn over portions of the rack to assemble it, artfully, will not be easy. However, it will engage and delight customers.

“The amount of investment needed to repurpose this building is enormous,” Mr. Angelucci confirms (Dr. Gupta would later tell this writer it will be nearly a quarter of a billion dollars). “It’s a huge amount of work, and we want to do it right.”

The renderings bear this out.

While long glass openings will be incorporated into the mostly pristine south facade, the middle bay will retain its six large sea gates (and their shutters), and the first and ninth bays will remain intact. On the east and west facades, the rhythmic and symmetrical arrangement of 108 windows (per facade) will be retained, with some shutters left open and others closed. The angles created by these shutters and shadows, as well as those of the flared brick rows at the bottom and top, informed Mr. Kazerouni’s design for the new building.

“Details about [the new] the bay windows actually borrow from that building… by tilting the base of the vertical pillars that make up those large windows,” he says. “In some bays it’s on one side, and in other bays it’s on the other side, so the playfulness that these [existing] the shutters represent, it is carried, but it tries to imitate it, it is a question of trying to find a language or a vocabulary in synergy with the existing building.

To further allow Rack House D to exert its dominance – and proudly show off its gently sloping roof – the first two floors of the new hotel will be significantly set back and covered entirely in glass. And because the Curio collection allows for non-standard decor, artifacts found in the building will be used liberally.

As one of the last buildings in the neighborhood to be repurposed (across the street, the General Distilling Company building, also by David Roberts Jr., awaits new life), children’s gloves, a heart tender and motivation other than huge profit be required.

“For us, it’s a sense of accomplishment,” says Dr. Gupta. “It’s not only [about] make money; I also want my second and third generation to look at this hotel and say, “My father, my grandfather, built it.”

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