Randolph National Bank (South Royalton Railroad Station)

The railroad station is the reason for the existence of South Royalton village. As the Vermont Central Railroad was being built along the White River Valley in 1848, mill owner Daniel Tarbell realized that the ideal location for a station was not in Royalton village farther upstream, but where the road from the mills in Tunbridge and Chelsea (VT 110) met the river. He purchased land, built freight and passenger depots (1849–1850), platted a village, and erected a number of its buildings. The result was a complete, orderly, and remarkably unified railway village, mostly of frame Greek Revival construction. The station, Congregational Church, and inn faced onto a citizen-provided park. When an 1886 fire destroyed most of the stores on both sides of Main Street, the town added the property on the east side of the street to the park, and the railroad agreed to build a new station looking onto the park, adapting the old station as a freight house. This second station is Queen Anne in style with a brick first floor sheltered by a continuous deep, flared canopy on airy curving brackets. Above a half floor of imbricated wood shingles, a slate roof has deep eaves and gables with Eastlake bargeboards and filled with panels of textured shingling and diagonal clapboards. The significant use of textures and the large horseshoe-arched windows that define each end suggest that the station is the work of George Guernsey.