Entertaining the City: Warehouse District Audio Walking Tour
In a nutshell:
1 hour
14 blocks
7 stops
Now that it’s nice enough to be outside for longer than thirty minutes without getting frostbite, it’s the perfect time to come out of hibernation and enjoy the Warehouse District’s audio walking tour.
The tour is roughly an hour long and takes you through some of the highlights of the district (both past and present) while talking about the history of the buildings and area in general. The audio tour can be found by downloading the izi.TRAVEL app for free and searching “Entertaining the City” or more simply “Warehouse District.” The tour is GPS triggered, so all you have to do is follow the map, and the audio will play automatically at the next location.
The tour begins conveniently at the Brownstone Plaza on Broad St, where you can grab a coffee at Cafe DRIP and a snack from Queen City Cakes to keep you going before you take off (and don’t forget to wear a face mask!).
The tour’s first stop is 1908 7th Ave, which you might know as the old Sear’s Bargain Centre, but was also the Eaton’s Mall and former Dominion Park, the original home of the Regina Rugby Club (who would later become the Saskatchewan Roughriders). In 1912 the Regina Cyclone destroyed the 600-seat grandstand, and the land was eventually sold (illegally—gasp! The scandalous details can be heard on the tour) by the city to the Eaton’s Company. Eaton’s eventually built the building you see now which was used as a warehouse for the company’s popular mail-order catalog.
There’s some distance between stops, and it’s hard not to think of the history of each building I pass, or how I’d repurpose an old brick garage that’s for sale. (The answer to which is “build a recording studio.” Exposed brick walls. Hardwood floors. A small control room in the former office and a large live room for tracking in what used to be the main shop. Yes, I have thought about this before; why do you ask?)
The next place I stop is 1326 Hamilton St, which has gone through many different phases of aesthetics and functionality. It’s the current home of Readiness Fitness but many will also remember it as The State and eventually The Distrikt. Like many buildings in the district, its survival depends on its ability to adapt, be repurposed, and become something beyond its original intention.
The Exchange, which is also on the tour, holds a similar history. When the building was built in 1930 it originally housed a wholesale fruit company and has seen many tenants before becoming home to one of the few all-ages live venues in the city. And I think that’s what this tour captures best: how things are reused and reimagined in the district, how new identities can be constructed beyond what is imagined now, that the future is not bound by the limits of the present.
I’m not going to spoil the tour by discussing each stop, so you should definitely get outside and go for a stroll through the district to check it out for yourself. You can find the audio tour by downloading the izi.TRAVEL app for free and searching “Entertaining the City: Warehouse District.”