The site opened in 1914 as the Taihoku Winery, a privately owned operation that produced sake and ginseng wines during Japan's colonial administration of Taiwan. The winery also bred moth orchids, an unlikely sideline that reflected the Japanese fascination with cultivating beauty even in industrial settings. In 1922, the colonial government nationalized wine production by declaring it a monopoly item. The winery was purchased by the state and renamed the Taiwan Governor-General's Monopoly Bureau, Taihoku Wine Factory. Under government control, production shifted to rice wine and liquors, practical spirits for a colony whose agricultural surplus could be distilled into revenue.

When the Republic of China took control of Taiwan in 1945, the winery changed hands again, becoming the Taiwan Province Monopoly Bureau, Taipei Wine Factory. By 1949, the Monopoly Bureau had expanded to include tobacco, and the name grew accordingly -- Taiwan Province Tobacco and Wine Government Monopoly Bureau, Taipei First Winery. The factory's most famous product was Taibai Liquor, a cheap spirit distilled from cassava that became a staple drink for ordinary Taiwanese. In the mid-1960s, the operation was renamed yet again, this time as the Fruit Wine Factory, and shifted toward fruit wine production in compliance with government agricultural policy. Rice wine remained the mainstay, but the fruit wines marked the beginning of what the factory's historians call its golden age -- a period of diversified production and profitability that lasted until Taipei's rapid urbanization caught up with it.

By 1987, the factory had become an environmental liability. Manufacturing pollution and skyrocketing land values in central Taipei made relocation inevitable, and operations were moved to Linkou District in what was then Taipei County. The buildings sat empty. For a decade, the compound -- brick warehouses, production halls, courtyards shaded by old trees -- deteriorated behind locked gates. It was slated for demolition when the Golden Bough Theater Group's illegal occupation in 1997 ignited a public debate about the fate of Taipei's industrial heritage. Artists and performing groups rallied to demand the winery's preservation, arguing that a city that destroyed every building with character would eventually have none left.

The campaign succeeded. In December 2003, the Council for Cultural Affairs assumed management of the site and launched a comprehensive reconstruction that began in early 2004. By the end of 2005, the renamed Huashan 1914 Creative Park opened its doors to the public, offering studios, exhibition spaces, and performance venues to artists and nonprofit organizations. In November 2007, management was contracted to Taiwan Cultural-Creative Development Co., Ltd., which has operated the park since. Theater groups, painters, wood sculptors, writers, and filmmakers from Taiwan and abroad now use the industrial spaces that once fermented rice wine. The old brick buildings and open courtyards provide a rougher, more atmospheric alternative to Taipei's polished galleries, and the park has become one of the city's most important venues for contemporary art and cultural programming. It sits within walking distance of Zhongxiao Xinsheng Station on the Taipei Metro, planted in the middle of one of the city's busiest commercial districts -- a pocket of creative disorder in an otherwise orderly grid.