This year marks the 100th anniversary of the start of operations at the once mighty Zemgale railway station. As a Latvian border station near the border with Poland (now Lithuania), it existed between 1922 and 1944. Since 2006, the former station building, which has been granted the status of an architectural monument, has become the home of the beautiful Zemgale Catholic Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.

The first Republic of Latvia originally built and developed the Zemgale station as a strategically important railway hub to strengthen the border area, and to create a good impression of the prosperous Latvian state for arriving tourists, as well as job seekers from Poland and Lithuania.

At one time, there were 17 tracks in front of the station – Latvian export goods were sorted here for onward dispatch, farmers brought sugar beet to the station to be handed over and ordered necessary goods from Riga. Visas for European countries were issued here and customs officers were busy at work.

The construction of the Zemgale railway station on the Saint Petersburg-Warsaw railway line in the section between Daugavpils and Kurcums also facilitated the establishment and development of the village of Zemgale as a settlement in the Demene parish of Augšdaugava Municipality. The status of a densely populated area (village) was granted to the village of Zemgale in 1932.

The Zemgale station was designed by architect Jānis Neija. Construction of the 782-square-metre masonry building was completed in 1928; its left wing was commissioned in 1927, and the central part a year later, though it is the only part that has survived to this day. (...)