A feature with a diversified body, lavishly decorated with wooden details in a way that is reminiscent of representative wooden buildings erected at the turn of the 19th and 20th century in the Russian partition, mainly serving the army and railway. It has its provenance in wooden structures popular in Russia.

History

The railway station was erected in 1896, along with the construction of the railway line. It was renovated in the early 1980s through, among others, reconstructing the residential part (walling up two door openings linking the residential part with a waiting room and a hall, cutting out door openings in the eastern façade and adding an annex). Another renovation took place in 1990. Since mid-1990s, the railway station has been out of use, for it was replaced with a new, brick structure.

Description

The station is located on the eastern side of the Suwałki-Šeštokai railway line.

The feature is modelled on wooden Russian architecture.

A one-storey building on an elongated rectangular plan, with avant-corpses on longer façades (in the eastern avant-corps, there is an annex with a hall in front of the entrance to the waiting room); an annex with a hall added to the façade. The main body is covered by a hip roof, whereas a slightly taller central part that includes a hall is covered by a perpendicular hip roof. Dormers are located in slopes over shorter façades. An annex including a hall is covered by a shed roof, while a vestibule in front of the eastern avant-corps - by a three-sloped roof.

Erected as a log structure of pine and spruce bales with dovetail joints, with the use of supporting pillars to extend the panel, the building rests on a foundation of break-stone bound by cement mortar. Roofs covered with galvanised sheet metal. Walls boarded with profiled planks. Wooden window frames; frame, multi-panel, double windows with ornament glass; panel doors, one- and two-winged with a transom light, some internal doors glazed. Hardwood floors on joists and concrete floors; wooden, beam floors with plastered soffit. Interior walls covered with a plaster. Tiled ovens and kitchens. The chimneys are made of brick.

Façades lavishly decorated with weatherboarding and details cut in boards. Weatherboarded walls in a strip-like arrangement: vertical weatherboarding up to and over the windows, horizontal weatherboarding between the windows; strips are separated by bar cornices. Under a string course, there is a strip of short, vertically arranged and pointed planks. Corners boarded to form pilasters. Analogical pilasters crown the window and door openings. Openwork corbels instead of pilaster capitals. An eaves bar is decorated with cubes, small arcades as well as serrated in a pointed and semi-circular arrangement. Cornices made of openwork planks nailed to eaves bars. Rautens in corners of window surroundings.

The interior is partitioned into a residential part (northern) and a station part. The residential part includes six rooms and a hall in a two-bay arrangement, with an entrance on the shorter north façade. The station part consists of a lobby, a control room, a ticket office, a luggage room and a hall in an enfilade arrangement. The lobby floor is supported by two wooden pillars with decorated braces; benches are mounted around pillars. The lobby walls are covered with half-height, vertical panels.

The structure is out of use, available to be viewed from the outside.

compiled by Aneta Kułak, Regional Branch of the National Heritage Board of Poland in Bialystok, 23-09-2014.

Bibliography

• Gaweł A., Konkurs na Najlepiej Zachowany Zabytek Wiejskiego Budownictwa Drewnianego w Województwie Podlaskim 2010, Białystok 2010.
• Karta ewidencyjna, Budynek dworcowy PKP w Trakiszkach, oprac. Świderski J.B., 1990, Archiwum Wojewódzkiego Urzędu Ochrony Zabytków w Białymstoku oraz Archiwum Narodowego Instytutu Dziedzictwa w Warszawie.