Description of Historic Place

Lévis Railway Station (Intercolonial) National Historic Site of Canada is a two-storey, stone railway station building located on the east (town) side of CN railway tracks that historically ran along the east bank of the St. Lawrence River in the city of Lévis. It is situated at the head of Côté du Passage street, near its junction with rue Saint Laurent.

Heritage Value

Lévis Railway Station (Intercolonial) was commemorated in 1976 as the effective terminus of the Intercolonial Railway from Halifax.

The heritage value of this site resides in its association with the historic Intercolonial Railway illustrated by its physical survival from the nineteenth century.

The Intercolonial Railway, originally built between Halifax and Rivière-du-Loup (1867), extended its main line to end at Lévis in 1879 by the purchase of the Charny/Rivière-du-Loup line constructed by the Grand Trunk Railway between 1854 and 1860. In 1884 the Intercolonial Railway extensively remodelled the Lauzon town hall/market (1864) in Lévis to serve as its station. In the years that followed, the Grand Trunk Railway and the Québec Central Railway also used terminal facilities in the building. Both the Grand Trunk Railway and the Intercolonial were folded into Canadian National Railways (CNR) after 1919, and the building became a CNR station. It was renovated and modernized in 1986 for use as a VIA Rail passenger depot, but was closed in 1993 when service stopped on the railway line on which it stands.

Sources : HSMBC Minutes, June 1976, November 1976, November 1988, March 1994.

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that contribute to the heritage character of the site include:

- the rectangular massing of the two-storey building under a hipped roof with hipped roof dormers on either side;
- regularly spaced, segmentally arched windows;
- the station’s simple classical details;
- the few details of the original town hall/market building still visible on the ground floor (footprint, openings and their alignment), craftsmanship and materials of the original stone exterior walls;
- the siting, immediately beside the former tracks and set back from the public road by an open space;
- the date stone ''1864", originally positioned on the façade, mounted in a commemorative monument.