Grand Trunk Railroad Station, Yarmouth Maine
- Categories:
- Maine
- Railroad Facility
- Passenger Station

The Grand Trunk Station in Yarmouth, now owned by the Village Improvement Society, has been handsomely restored and has new life thanks to adaptive re-use as a florist shop. This is particularly fortunate in view of the fact that this neat little station is architecturally unique in the state and is located on a historically important railroad route.
Differing from the traditional Stick Style-Italianate stations which predominated during the last two decades of the 19th century, this building, although retaining in modified form the large brackets supporting the extended roof overhang, has a much more steeply pitched hip roof, the north end of which descends to cover a curved apsoidal form not found in other existing Maine stations. The high-rising granite block wall base also lends the structure a stylish distinction not found in earlier small stations.
Chartered in 1845, the Atlantic and St. Lawrence Railroad from Portland to Montreal was the brainchild of John Alfred Poor, Maine's visionary railroad pioneer. Basically Poor contemplated the construction of this route for the purpose of diverting the commerce of Canada and the Great Lakes country away from the St. Lawrence, which was frozen for part of the year, to the port of Portland. Finally completed in July of 1853, the road was leased the following month to the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada for 999 years. Although Portland was the actual terminus of the railroad in the United States, Yarmouth was the point at which the Grand Trunk, at an important junction, crossed the Maine Central Railroad and took up its northwesterly course over the Appalachians west of Rumford and into Canada.
Building Description
The Yarmouth Railroad Station of Yarmouth, Maine built in 1906, is a charming and very well-preserved example of its type.
The building is of frame construction with a hipped roof, two ornate brick chimneys, and granite block walls rising some five feet above grade. The station is basically rectangular in plan, oriented north-south, but its northern end is apsoidal in form. Central bays project from the east and west walls, and a small ell, nearly square in plan, extends from the south end.
The most conspicuous decorative elements are the delicate wooden brackets that support the extensive roof overhang typical of this class of building. Fenestration is generally 1/1.

View looking northwest (1979)
