More than fifteen years after it was nearly destroyed by fire, the restoration of the Virginian Railway Station is now complete. The Roanoke Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society will celebrate with a grand opening on Saturday, November 12.
The station, located at 1402 Jefferson Street SE, will be open to the public from 11am to 4pm. Chapter members will lead guided tours of the station on the hour from noon to 3pm. Entertainment will be provided by the Norfolk Southern Lawmen and refreshments will be available for purchase.
The Virginian Station was built in 1909 and opened in 1910 as the crowning jewel of stations on the Virginian Railway which stretched from Deepwater (near Charleston) West Virginia to Norfolk, Virginia. Financed and built by Henry Huttleston Rogers, it competed with the Norfolk and Western, Chesapeake and Ohio and other railroads for the coal traffic fueling the American and foreign economies at the height of the industrial revolution.
Built in the 20th Century, the Virginian had a more favorable grade than its 19th Century competitors. In the 1940s, after the heyday of train travel in the 1920s, the Roanoke station served four passenger trains daily, two east and two west-bound.
Railroad passenger traffic nationwide declined after World War II as the travelling public turned to airlines and automobiles. Passenger service through Roanoke on the Virginian ended in 1956. The Virginian was merged into the Norfolk and Western in 1959. The passenger station was ultimately leased to feed and seed store tenants. It tragically burned on January 29, 2001 and was substantially damaged. Today, the restored Virginian Railway Station stands as one of the few surviving structures of Roanoke’s “other railroad.”
By early March 2001 Ken Miller, president of the Roanoke Chapter NRHS and Alison Blanton, president of the Roanoke Valley Preservation Foundation led their respective organizations to form an informal partnership to restore the Virginian Station which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002. After the Norfolk Southern Corporation donated the property to the Chapter in 2004 – 2005, plans to restore the station began. Under sponsorship of the City of Roanoke appropriations and grants totaling more than $1.25 million were obtained which, with more than 20% matching funds from the Chapter as well as state and federal historic tax credits, enabled the restoration to proceed.
Phase I restoration was begun and completed in 2012. This phase included removal of the substantial asbestos and lead contamination, stabilization of the building and replacement of the tile roof destroyed by the fire. The replacement tile came from the Ludowici Company in Ohio who had provided the original in 1910. It is in the same style and a similar color as the original.
Phase II was completed in 2016. It comprised completion of the interior including wiring and HVAC, parking, landscaping and the Virginian monuments. Chapter Historian Ken Miller and Architect Barry Rakes determined the original paint scheme from historical documents and paint chips from the window frames and sills. Ken even had the paint formula from a century ago.
All window frames and some doors were removed before the restoration, stored in a trailer on premises, re-finished and reinstalled. Even the mop sink in the women’s room and the urinal in the men’s room are “historic originals” over 100 years old. The terrazzo floor was damaged in the fire but was restored to a modern day beauty. The chapter’s mechanical committee recovered, restored and installed the operating signal light outside. Chapter members also recovered and preserved the large “Virginian” tablet monument when the Virginian’s Narrows power plant was demolished more than 35 years ago.
The smaller Baggage and Express building will be used by the Chapter as its principal office with a display area for artifacts and exhibits from and about the Virginian Railway and its employees. The larger Passenger Station building will be leased to a tenant yet to be determined.
