When Pina Petricone, co-founder of Toronto design firm Giannone Petricone Associates, first visited the then-shuttered Royal Hotel in Picton, Ontario, back in 2013, she was intrigued by the strange green carpeting in one of the rooms. Upon closer inspection, she realized that it was actually moss.
Opened in 1879 as an upscale destination for rail travellers, the Royal later deteriorated into a seedy tavern before closing up shop altogether in 2008, and the roof began leaking not long after. The hotel that Petricone walked into was decrepit, but it also boasted that rare dignity that comes from having lived a long and complicated life. “There was something incredibly sublime about the building in that state,” she says.
Guests at the revamped Royal Hotel, which officially reopened this past spring, will be relieved to hear that the moss is
