Cornwallis Inn

The Cornwallis Inn in Kentville, also rarely known as the Cornwallis Hotel, began as the Aberdeen Hotel, a wooden second empire style hotel built in 1892 behind the Kentville Station on Aberdeen Street. A glacial drumlin hill was leveled to provide a site for the hotel and provide fill for the Windsor and Annapolis Railway's growing railyard. The hotel included a branch of the Union Bank of Halifax, prior to the bank's 1910 merger with the Royal Bank. The hotel was purchased and renovated by the DAR in 1919 and renamed the Cornwallis Inn. The DAR renovated the hotel, installing more modern wiring, and plumbing and added private bathrooms.^[1] The acquisition of the hotel put the DAR well-placed to serve the tourist boom of the 1920s.

However, by the end of the decade, the old wooden hotel was proving inadequate for the volume of travellers and the needs of special events. The old Cornwallis Inn was replaced in 1930 by a new and much grander structure at the centre of town on Main Street.^[2] Built in just 208 days, the grand hotel opened in December 1930. Built in a Canadian Pacific Tudor revival "Baronial" architecture, it included 100 guest rooms, 4 luxury suites, a 150-person dining room, lounge, meeting rooms and 10 sample rooms for travelling salesmen. A large assembly room with accommodation for 250 people served as a ballroom, banqueting chamber and convention hall. The hotel also included a billiard room, card room, luncheon room, barber shop and ladies’ hairdressing parlor.^[3] The public rooms overlooked an acre of gardens in front of the hotel along Kentville's Main Street. The largest hotel west of Halifax, the Cornwallis Inn dominated the Kentville skyline, overlooking the town's two-story business district with its seven stories of brick and limestone. Although the hotel was built in the brink of the Great Depression, it quickly became the centre for valley events such as conferences and upscale weddings. When the Apple Blossom Festival began in 1933, the Cornwallis Inn began the festival's annual headquarters and the space where Queen Annapolisa coronation and festival ball were held.^[4]

The railway sold the Cornwallis Inn in 1963. It was drastically remodelled by the new owners to suit automobile traffic. The gardens and front entrance were demolished to make way for a large parking lot and retail arcade while the rear of the hotel was converted to a small bus station for Acadia Lines buses. Half the hotel rooms were converted to apartments. The building of Highway 101 in the 1970s, which bypassed Kentvillle, caused hotel traffic to decrease even further as new motels on the 101 diverted travellers. The hotel closed in 1976 and all the rooms were converted to apartments.^[5] Rebranded in 2018 as the "Main Street Station", the building survives today as an apartment building, retail and restaurant location and is the last surviving building in Kentville connected to the DAR.^[6]