Restoration of Picton’s dilapidated 1881 Victorian railway hotel earns ACO award

The Royal Hotel has received the Paul Oberman Award at the Architectural Conservancy of Ontario (ACO) 19th annual Heritage Awards, held last week, honouring leaders, projects and initiatives worthy of provincial recognition.

The award recognizes projects that incorporate and reuse significant heritage structures in fitting and imaginative ways, conserving them for future use and enjoyment. The Royal’s win category is for a large-scale restoration project.

The ACO is the province’s principal non-government volunteer organization dedicated to the conservation of built heritage, founded in 1933. (As a direct result of the demolition of two heritage homes at Sandbanks Provincial Park in September 2021, local citizens banded to form a Prince Edward County branch.)

In the ACO’s description for The Royal nomination states:

The Royal Hotel, Picton, 1910

“Over a decade, Giannone Petricone Associates (GPA) worked with its client to revive and transform the dilapidated 1881 Victorian railway hotel in Picton into an exemplary community landmark. GPA’s aim was to create lasting, impactful change by elevating Main Street’s most prominent building, via a surgical process of restoration and character recovery. In collaboration with heritage specialists ERA Architects, the architects successfully breathed new life into the 1881 structure, to endure another 150 years.

Boarded up since 2008, the clients acquired the structure in 2013 with the goal to protect it from a fate of demolition and to return it to the community as a landmark gathering place. Their extraordinary commitment supported GPA’s approach to conserve as much of the building’s original character as was salvageable, beyond restoration of the heritage protected top two floors of the front façade. Council unanimously approved the heritage permit in 2015.

A key challenge was restoring the lost lustre of the 31,000-square-foot hotel, while also elevating it to a contemporary version of itself. When the project started, the building was in a state of ruin: staircases were waterlogged, floors were lined with thick green moss and just as construction was to begin, the roof caved in.”

-James Lowery photo

In 2017, the east wall of the building subsided, causing work to stop while engineers secured the wall to the bedrock. Construction was also disrupted four to five months by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The new Royal Hotel dining room

In December 2021, The Royal opened its doors again as a boutique hotel and dining establishment. Within the building’s three salvageable brick walls the team had established a new 28-room hotel, with programming intended for the local community as well as guests, including a cafe, three bars, a fine-dining restaurant, a spa, gym, and outdoor porch and garden.