The lengthy history of the Royal Hotel in Prince Edward County began in 1879, when it opened as a railway hotel. Over the decades, the building lived through many iterations, until it was finally left abandoned in 2008. A few years later, the property was discovered in a state of ruin by the Sorbara family, who decided to restore it to a proper hotel once more. In 2016, renovations were slated to begin. For the photographers Ginger Sorbara and Greg Pacek, there was a pressure to preserve images of the space before that happened. It was the end of an era, and that particular moment in time was about to evaporate.

Sorbara notes that in the field of photography, there’s a tradition of photographing the mundane and the ordinary, rather than large, grand moments in history. The photos in this essay present the small story of a hotel and its decline—as well as the story of how nature subsumes human creations. Over the years that the hotel had been left to come apart, nature had undeniably begun to eat it. 

Navigating the dilapidated property in order to capture these images was treacherous. Many parts were quite dark because of how the former hotel had been boarded-up. It was a bit of a house of horrors, says Sorbara, but it didn’t feel haunted or dangerous—at least not in the sense of a lurking boogeyman. Throughout the property, abandonment had paved the way for nature’s entry. In some places, the duo noticed water dripping from the ceiling, but there wasn’t quite enough light for anything to grow. Then, they would open the door to one of the former suites, and find that there was enough light and water that the carpet had become alive. The hotel was host to an entire ecosystem of insects, and had evidence of squirrels and other wildlife. Sometimes, Sorbara and Pacek would open a door and a flock of pigeons would burst into flight around their heads. 

Since 1879, the Royal Hotel has had many different purposes: inn, tavern, community meeting space. History has wound itself around the building, and the building has changed to accommodate history. Throughout the property were the vestiges of different interventions, alongside nature’s most recent one. All these eras were jumbled together in a layered fashion. It’s this sense of fragile contact with history that frames these photos. Through these images, we hold onto, interrogate and invent the history of a building that has lived through so many different chapters. 

Ginger Sorbara was born in a small artist community near Nelson, British Columbia, and raised outside Toronto. She received an undergraduate degree in architecture from McGill University, as well as a Master of Architecture from the University of Waterloo. She practices residential design and architecture. Her work in photography, painting and drawing has dealt with the concepts of the abstract in the figurative, the phenomenal in the banal and the beauty in the distressed.

Greg Pacek is a Toronto-based commercial and fine art photographer specializing in portraiture and architectural interiors. His work has appeared in dozens of national and international publications, as well as film, television and online campaigns. His artwork can be found in several corporate and private collections in Canada and abroad.