Description of Historic Place

With its flamboyant roof and robust fieldstone walls, the Virden Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) Station strikes a distinctive profile in its southwestern Manitoba community. Built in 1900, the two-storey structure, originally a combined station-residence, is situated on the northern edge of the business district next to the railway tracks that bisect Virden. The site's provincial designation applies to the building and the grounds it occupies.

Heritage Value

The impressive Virden CPR Station is the only modestly sized station-residence of fieldstone construction that remains in Manitoba. Its design by eminent railway architect R.B. Pratt is further distinguished by the imposing roofline, a complicated composition of hip and pyramidal sections dominated by pairs of large canopied dormers. Four other CPR sites in southern Manitoba shared this distinctive plan, but their facilities were executed in wood instead of stone. Built as the CPR was emerging from a difficult financial period, this substantial structure, with its rustic, yet majestic appearance, conveyed an image of corporate solidity and dignity.

Source: Manitoba Heritage Council Minutes: September 6, 1984

Character-Defining Elements

Key elements that define the heritage character of the Virden CPR Station site include:
- the flat, open, grassed and partially gravelled grounds on the northeast side of 6th Avenue South, with the station set immediately adjacent to the railway yard and tracks to the northeast

Key elements of the station's exterior heritage character include:
- its two-storey central block flanked on the east and west by single-storey wings
- the complex roof form, featuring a steeply pitched hip roof interrupted by dormers with half gables, vents and extended and bellcast eaves
- the coursed and roughly dressed 40-centimetre fieldstone walls of the main level, decorative shingles on the exterior walls of the second storey and shingle roofing
- the deep overhanging eaves supported by massive timber brackets on corbels
- the fenestration consisting of many simple rectangular and square windows in singles and groups, with substantial lintels and sills and surrounds painted to contrast with the stone; also, triangular windows in the half gables
- the telegrapher's bay set on a projecting `V-plan', facing the tracks on the northeast elevation
- multiple entrances featuring plain panelled and glazed doors, as well as half-timbered freight doors in the south end

Key elements that define the station's function and layout include:
- the formal rectangular plan, with the intact configurations of the second floor
- the functional details, finishes and furnishings, including two fireplaces, moulding, hardwood floors throughout, the stepped wainscotting and wooden banister on the staircase, period benches, etc.