Scarth Block

Set on a prominent corner location on Virden's main commercial street, the Scarth

Block is an attractive, small two-storey brick commercial building in a restrained Romanesque revival

style, with an apartment above the storefront. The municipal designation applies to the building and

the lot on which it stands.

The Scarth Block is a good example

of the kind of commercial building that lined the main streets of every Manitoba town around the turn

of the twentieth century. Within the Town of Virden, which still boasts a good collection of such buildings,

the Scarth Block anchors both the end of a relatively-intact strip, and an intersection on which all

four corners are occupied by buildings of some historic interest. The building is modest in size and

ambition, but it nevertheless draws the eye with its row of round-arched original wood sash windows with

brick voussoirs and projecting sills in the second storey, and the decorative brick parapet that survives

on the front. The building has fairly good exterior integrity; the shopfront, although altered, retains

its original general pattern of a recessed central doorway with large display windows.

Source: Town

of Virden By-law No. 2729, 5 December 2013

Key

elements that define the site character of the Scarth Block include:

- its placement, flush with the

sidewalks, as part of a row of heritage buildings on an important corner of Virden's main commercial

street

Key elements that define the exterior heritage character of the Scarth Block include:

- the

overall oblong form, two storeys in height, with a flat roof

- the brick construction with front and

side finished walls, and party walls to the southeast and southwest (rear)

- the main facade and northwest

elevation: the round-arched openings and wood sash windows, with their arched tops and drip mouldings;

the brick parapet with its two dogtooth brick courses and brick corbelling; the division of the side

wall into sections with shallow brick piers between them

- the general pattern of the main floor shopfront,

with its large display windows above a bulkhead, and centrally-placed recessed door

Key elements that

define the interior heritage character of the building include:

- the wood sash windows in the second

storey, with their glazing pattern and the pattern in the upper corners whereby the squared sash is fitted

to the round-topped opening

- some original features on the second storey: some baseboards and mouldings,

four-panelled wood doors with transoms above; the varnished wood balustrade at the head of the stairwell,

etc.