The Royal Hotel

Recipient of the Paul Oberman Award for Adaptive Reuse: Large-Scale/Team/Corporate

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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.

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. Within the building’s three salvageable brick walls the team established a new 28-room hotel, with programming intended for the local community as well as hotel guests, including a cafe, three bars, a fine-dining restaurant, a spa, gym, and outdoor porch and garden. 

A catalyst for change, The Royal Hotel has sparked the restoration of additional properties in Picton and serves as a benchmark for future heritage conservation efforts in the area as well as in the larger context of small-town Ontario.

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