Description of Historic Place

The Vilna Pool Hall and Barbershop is a single-storey, wood frame building with a boomtown front. It was constructed in 1921 and is located on one lot on the main street in the commercial district of Vilna in central Alberta.

Heritage Value

The heritage value of the Vilna Pool Hall and Barbershop lies in its representation of a typical kind of building found in Alberta's early twentieth-century rural villages. It also possesses heritage value as an excellent example of a vernacular style of boomtown architecture.

Like many rural communities, Vilna was responsible for providing a variety of services to a large agricultural hinterland. As a pool hall and barbershop from 1920 until 1996 (and a confectionary until the 1960s), the Pool Hall was a gathering place for men from the surrounding district.

The building is also an excellent example of the commercial boomtown style used for a variety of small businesses in rural western communities. As a purpose-built structure that served its original function for eight decades, it retained a variety of artifacts related to its historic use and possesses excellent integrity. It is the oldest building in town and part of a grouping of similar small businesses in the village centre.

Source: Alberta Culture and Community Spirit, Historic Resources Management Branch (File: Des. 2029)

Character-Defining Elements

The heritage value of the Vilna Pool Hall and Barbershop lies in such character-defining elements as:
- form, scale and massing;
- interior layout of an open plan with spaces for the barbershop area on the northeast quadrant, the pool hall counter and sales area on the southeast, and the larger principal area housing four large pool tables and furnishings;
- low-pitched gable end roof type;
- boomtown style facade;
- frame walls covered with horizontal sheathing and drop siding (exterior) and V-jointed tongue and groove (interior);
- tongue and groove, edge-grain, fir wood strip flooring;
- fenestration and door pattern including recessed front door and flanking streetfront windows on main street facade, single hung windows on sides and back;
- period electrical fixtures and wire runs.

Interior artifacts including:
- 1 high backed bench and 3 short benches;
- 4 tables, 2 - 6'x12' and 2 - 8'x10';
- 3 ball sets;
- 3 ball racks;
- 3 cue reaches;
- 4 scoring devices: 2 wall mounted and 2 wire from wall to wall;
- 1 wall-mounted snooker rules;
- 1 free-standing counter with wall cabinets in the southeast quadrant;
- 3 period advertising signs for Pepsi, 1 Cigarette sign and soda advertising signs;
- 1 barber chair;
- 1 barber floor and wall cabinet with sink;
- 1 barber mirror;
- 1 fly swatter.