The 1868 Leonard Street Police Station -- Nos. 19-21 Leonard St.

By 1862 Nathaniel Bush had achieved the rank of sergeant within the New York Police Department.  That year his responsibilities were expanded when he was made the official architect for the force.   Bush’s station house designs were attractive but no-nonsense.  Repeatedly working in the popular Italianate style, he followed a tried and true plan—a symmetrical façade featuring a centered entrance, Renaissance pediments over some openings—both triangular and arched—and molded lintels.

In 1867 he began work on another.  The Fifth Precinct had been located at No. 49 Leonard Street for years and its station house was outdated and inadequate.  Two old buildings at Nos. 17 and 19 Leonard Street were demolished and construction begun on a new station house and jail, over 50-feet wide, for the Fifth Precinct.

The building was completed in June 1868, according to the Record & Guide.  Police historian Augustine E. Costello, in his 1885 Our Police Protectors, History of the New York Police, described the precinct as embracing “nearly all the dry goods district” including the Hudson River Railroad depot, “the large grocery houses, the public stores, Chambers Street Hospital, much of the produce business, and several bonded warehouse.”

The 97 officers assigned to the new building fought a different type of crime than those in the notorious Gaslight or Tenderloin areas.  In the “dry goods district” downtown there was little problem with prostitution, illegal saloons or gambling; but there were plenty of con artists and robbers.

On November 15, 1868 The New York Herald reported “The confidence operators of New York being stimulated by the unparalleled boldness of bank burglars and check forgers in their games of late, are and have been maneuvering recently with a vim and action that remind the police authorities of days long passed.”  The newspaper pointed to scam committed in the Fifth Precinct.

The day before a Canadian, William McDonald, walked into the station house.  He had arrived in New York that morning.  For two decades thousands had headed to California to strike it rich and now the Transcontinental Railway was nearing completion, making the trip decidedly more convenient.  McDonald, described by the newspaper as “a man of modest demeanor and unsophisticated ideas,” intended to join the migration.

At the ticket office on Canal Street the clerk refused to accept his Canadian gold coins.  He was instructed to go “up the street” and exchange his money for American currency.  On the way he was stopped by a “well dressed man who asked him if he was going to San Francisco.”  One thing led to another and before too long the con man had convinced McDonald to allow him to exchange the gold for American $20 coins.

After the fast-talking New Yorker was gone, McDonald had the sinking feeling that he had been duped.  He showed the coins to a few people and “found that he had been swindled, and the result is that he is now a stranger in New York penniless and without friends.”

In addition to handling crimes like fights among the sailors who arrived on ships docked at the nearby Hudson River piers; the officers of the Fifth Precinct also dealt with more humanitarian issues.  Insufferable summer heat coupled with layers of Victorian clothing was a deadly combination.  On August 14, 1872 alone three victims of heat and sun stroke were carried into the station house.  One of them died there. 

The living conditions of the poor, too, were sometimes the concern of the Fifth Precinct.  On June 12, 1871, for instance, The New York Times reported “A horror tottered into the Leonard-street Police station yesterday morning, in the person of Eliza Gamble, who had come from No. 29 Hubert-street, carrying her week-old infant in her arms.  Both were plainly dying for want of proper nourishment, and appealed without a word for succor.”  The starving woman and her baby were taken to Bellevue Hospital.

The Fifth Precinct had, of course, its share of more serious crime.  On September 9, 1881 Thomas Quinlan walked into the police station and informed Sgt. Doran that his wife, Julia, had died during the night.  Quinlan, who was a longshoreman, lived with his wife in a tenement building at No. 78 Watts Street a few blocks north.

Quinlan explained that his wife was “an industrious and good woman, but was of extremely intemperate habits.  For nearly a month past, although sober during the day, she was drunk every night.”  He told the sergeant he was willing to sign an affidavit that “she had not gone to bed sober one night in three weeks.”  He said that when she was drunk she would often threaten to take her own life. 

That night, when he got up around 4:00 in the morning, he said, she was lying on the floor.  He assumed she had left the bed because of the heat, so he did not disturb her.  When he arose at 6:00 to go to work, she had not moved.  When he tried to arouse her he found her dead.

According to The Times “The case was regarded by the Police as one of ordinary nature, and it was not until a rumor reached the station-house that the woman had not died a natural death that any action was taken.”  Only then was an officer dispatched to the apartment. 

The body of 45-year old Julia Quinlan was still on the floor after so many hours.  She had a large bruise over her left eye and a strip of calico, torn from her apron, was bound so tightly around her neck that it was removed only “with much difficulty.”   When it was removed it left what the coroner described as “a broad, deep mark in the flesh.”

Quite astonishingly, although the Deputy Coroner thought “it impossible for her to have tied the strip of calico about her neck herself,” and was led to “suspect that she may have met her death at the hands of her husband,” The New York Times reported “All the indications were that Mrs. Quinlan had committed suicide.

The newspaper added that Quinlan “bears an excellent reputation in the neighborhood.  He had been married 10 years, and the only child of the couple is a bright girl about 6 years old.”

Nathaniel Bush’s station house buildings were functional, but they were most often poorly ventilated and lit.  In 1881 the Fifth Precinct Station House was deemed “unsafe” by the Bureau of Inspection of Buildings.  The City budgeted $5,000 to bring it up to standards on March 20, 1882.

In the meantime, the precinct continued operating as usual.  Capt. Joseph B. Eakins was commanding officer at the time.  Augustine E. Costello said of him “At one time no precinct was so overrun with burglars as this, and some of the depredations were serious, but Captain Eakins has been singularly fortunate since he has been there, and a burglary is a rare occurrence.”

At around 11:00 on the night of July 12, 1883 Capt. Eakins was sitting on the station house steps, no doubt to escape the heat inside, when a young man walked up and bowed.  He was about to give Eakins a startling confession.

Police had been looking for Aleck Boyer for about three days.  During the weekend of July 7 he and another man got into a vicious argument which would later end in death. 

The New York Times explained later “Robert Simpson, a truck driver, was living with a mulatto woman.  He and Boyer, a boatman, got into a quarrel over the woman’s slapping a boy for striking her with a stick.  Both were drunk.”  The disagreement ended with Simpson knocking Boyer over the head with a cast iron stove lid, and with the woman threatening revenge.

Robert Simpson was married, although he had been living with the woman involved in the conflict.  On Monday night, July 9, he went to the saloon at No. 2 York Street to meet his wife “and make up with her.”   Aleck Boyer had trailed him and while Simpson and his wife were talking in front of the saloon, Boyer rushed up and stabbed him in the head.  “Simpson ran into the saloon, came out again, fired off a pistol, and fell dead on the walk,” wrote The Times.

Now, on Thursday night, Aleck Boyer introduced himself to Capt. Eakins.

“The man who stabbed Simpson?”

“Yes.  I knew you were looking for me on account of that fight, so I came to give myself up.”

It was an easy conclusion to manhunt.

Not technically prisoners, these men attempt to sleep on a wooden pallet or the floor in the Precinct's "lounging room" around 1890.  They have all hung their hats tidily on the pegs provided.  photo by Jacob Riis, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York

There were occasional murders and serious incidents in the Fifth Precinct.  It was the here that the notorious con artist “Tom” Davis was murdered by James T. Holland, a Texan who had paid him $500 in exchange for $10,000 in counterfeit bills.  When Holland discovered the bundles were composed of bills on the top and bottom, and blank paper inside, he reacted by returning and firing a bullet into Davis.  The trial was a national sensation.

But as the 19^th century drew to a close, highly-publicized crime in the Fifth Precinct came from within the Leonard Street station house, rather than from the streets.  Graft and corruption were brought to light in 1891 when neighboring businessmen finally revolted against the extortion practices of Captain Thomas Stephenson, whom The Evening World described as tall and handsome.

On August 30, 1894 the newspaper reported “After many days of waiting, Police Captain John Thomas Stephenson was to-day placed on trial before the Commissioners at Police Headquarters of several charges of bribery.”  Testimonies throughout the day revealed the scheme by which the Fifth Precinct police, most notably the Captain, received money and goods. 

Martin N. Edwards, for instance, ran a fruit store on Duane Street.  The Evening World said that on September 12, 1891 he sent Stephenson “$38 in cash and $12 worth of fruit, making the $50 agreed upon for a year’s immunity from arrest for ordinance violation.”

Edwards testified “In the early part of March, 1891, a police officer came to my store.  He said the Captain used a great deal of fruit, and if we had no objection he would accept some fruit for the protection of us in the use of the sidewalk.”

The trial dragged on for months, until unexpectedly on December 15 Police Officer Augustus J. Thorne “under indictment and under arrest for perjury and bribery, confessed and was released and restored to duty, having implicated eight Captains or acting Captains, who had commanded him in that precinct, in bribetaking and protecting crime.”

With its honor restored, newspaper accounts regarding the Fifth Precinct again turned more positive.  None more so, perhaps, than that of Policeman Norman Sheldon and a “big, shaggy, tramp Newfoundland dog” on August 1895.   

Officer Sheldon was about a block away when he saw the massive canine running wildly down Chambers Street, followed by a mob of men and boys.  The Times reported that it was “given a wide berth by pedestrians, who ran into stores, cellar-ways, and hallways to get out of his path.”  As the beast and his pursuers neared, Sheldon ran into a store and got a rope, which he quickly tied into a slipnoose. 

He emerged just as the dog reached his location.  Like a Texas ranch hand, he lassoed the dog, then held him until it quieted down.  The Times reported “Shortly afterward he led the dog to the station house, where Sergt. Blair consigned him to a cell until the arrival of a wagon from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.”

Blair, in the meantime, sent for some meat for the dog.  By the time he was taken away he was as “quiet as a kitten.”  The sergeant initially wanted to keep the dog as a station house mascot; but “owing to his advanced age,” decided against it.

On May 1, 1898 the station house was renumbered, becoming the Eighth Precinct.   It was here that a Bureau of Investigation was established on October 29, 1900, just hours after what The Evening World called “The most terrific and disastrous explosion ever known in New York.” 

Fire had broken out at 12:18 that afternoon on the third floor of the Tarrant & Co. building at the northwest corner of Warren and Greenwich Streets.  The wholesale druggists stored large quantities of chemicals.  According to The Evening World, the flames reached the chemicals within four minutes, resulting in two “terrific explosions” which blew out the front of the building.  They were followed by three others “which completely wrecked it, along with the structures adjoining.”

The number of killed or injured topped 400.  Members of the Bureau of Information pulled together the information and witness accounts here regarding the disaster.

Eight years later the officers of the Eighth Precinct would deal with a different type of explosion.  On March 28, 1908 a Socialist protest which drew about 7,000 participants to Union Square threatened to get out of hand.  The Eighth Precinct was called to help control the unruly mob.

The New-York Tribune reported “Cards and circulars and pamphlets in Yiddish and the other polyglot dialects of the East Side were waved exultingly and defiantly in the faces of the men. ‘We will fight until we die!’ ‘We demand work!’ and demands for the over-throw of every one with the clean collar habit were passed about.”

By about 2:30 the park and the plaza were nearly cleared.  Captain Miles O’Reilly then began gathering his Eight Precinct officers at the east of the fountain to head back to Leonard Street.  The Tribune wrote “Up behind them ran [Selig] Silverstein to throw the bomb.”

Selig Silverstein, who also went by the name Cohen, was a well-known Russian born anarchist.  His hatred was aimed mostly at police.   At least one innocent bystander was killed and several police were injured, including Eight Precinct officers Patrick Hanan, who was struck by a piece of brass shrapnel, and Nicholas Conroy, whom the Tribune said “was bowled clean off his feet.”

By the time World War I had broken out the old Leonard Street station house was decidedly obsolete.  On March 24, 1917 the Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide reported that the City was “nearing conclusion” of negotiations involving the liquidation of several properties, including Nos. 19-21 Leonard Street.

In June 1918 the building was sold for $45,000 (a little over $700,000 in 2016) to Texan Robert E. Paine, owner of Standard Rice Company, Inc.  Two months later The American Contractor announced architect Charles Schaefer, Jr. had been commissioned to convert the building for “storage and loft” purposes.  The renovations, which cost $2,000, included the installation of a loading platform. 

Standard Rice Company would occupy the building several decades.  In 1941 it was home to the Semer Hardware Company.  Other tenants included the Ronald Paper Co., the Hailer Elevator Co., and the Empire Elevator Corporation.  Then in 1999 as the Tribeca neighborhood was rediscovered, it was converted to five apartments.  

photographs by the author

The 1872 32nd Precinct Station House -- No. 1854 Amsterdam Avenue

photo by Tim McDevitt, The Epoch Times

After real estate speculator Richard F. Carman made his fortune rebuilding the downtown area after the devastating Great Fire of 1835, he purchased large tracts of land—approximately 23 acres--in the open countryside of northern Manhattan. By the middle of the century Carmansville, a picturesque village of freestanding homes and barns, had developed.

In the meantime, New York City’s formerly-disordered police force had been reorganized into the New York City Police Department in 1844; now known as the Metropolitan Police. For the first time a military-type structure with rank and order was installed.

The 32nd Precinct was mapped out, covering the enormous area of all land north of 110th Street on the east side, and from 144th Street on the west side. Included was the quiet village of Carmansville.

Although there was essentially no crime in the sparsely-populated area, a small three-story brick station house was erected at 152nd Street and 10th Avenue (later to be renamed Amsterdam Avenue) in 1864 which, owing to the law-abiding nature of the community, did not even have a jail. Five years later plans were underway for a “new and more commodious building to meet the requirements of the 32nd Precinct," according to Augustine Costello in his 1885 book "Our Police Department."

Police Officer Nathaniel D. Bush, who had recently been given the status of official architect for the police department, set to work on the new building. Ground was broken in 1871 and the structure was completed a year later. Bush’s dignified French Second Empire design melded harmoniously with the residences and churches of the town’s prosperous citizens. Three high stories of red brick supported a steep mansard roof shingled in scalloped slate and capped with lacy iron cresting. Brownstone lintels and pediments finished the windows and brownstone quoining accented the corners and the slightly-projecting central sections of each façade. The red brick was painted off-white to simulate stone blocks. Over a century later the AIA Guide to New York City would call it “straight from a Charles Addams cartoon.”

The elegant and spacious new station house included all the facilities missing in the former building: a brick stable for its fourteen horses, a jail and sleeping rooms for “vagrants”—the Victorian term for the homeless.

As the stately station house which The New York Times termed “handsome” was rising, Precinct Captain Elanson Wilson’s chief clerk, Seth C. Hawley, recognized an opportunity. He ordered the builders to work alternatively on erecting the station house and adding an addition to his own home; all at the expense of the police department. When the house was finished, a former painter-turned-policeman, Officer Gray, was posted for three months at Hawley’s residence painting.

Graft at the new station house went even further. Captain Wilson, seeing the commodious accommodations of the new stable, brought his own four horses from his private stable to be boarded here. And while his horses received free feed at the city’s expense, he rented out the paddocks of his own stable for $30 a month per horse. Chief Clerk Hawley brought three of his horses to the precinct stables, as well.  And a cow.

The public had enough, however, when it was discovered that Captain Wilson posted one patrolman as a servant in the Wilson residence for two years, and another as a livery man in his private stables, attending to the horses in full uniform.

Among the policemen in the new building was Patrolman Richard S. Eldridge. The other cops referred to him as “Pops” and for several years he had been the truant officer in the neighborhood. In January 1885 Pops Eldridge was reassigned to regular patrol duty and he requested, instead, to be granted retirement.

On January 24 the 87-year old policeman retired; believed to be the oldest policeman in the United States.

Not all the police stationed at the 32nd Precinct Station House were so gentle. When Officer John W. McMurray heard that Hugh Smith had reported him to the Captain in December 1886, the officer hunted him down. Smith was clubbed severely and, when he escaped and jumped a fence, McMurray fired two shots at him. To calm himself down, the policeman entered a 10th Avenue saloon and bought a round of drinks. Unfortunately for John B. Nolan, he said something that displeased McMurray who then clubbed the man and took him to the station house. While Nolan was standing before the sergeant, McMurray clubbed him again.

Another officer, John Mara, sent word to the station house on January 3, 1888 that he was sick. Someone else would have to take up his post. Captain Cortright left to investigate. Sure enough, Mara had left his post at 115th Street and Cortright found him in a saloon “gloriously drunk.”

When the captain attempted to discipline the officer, Mara launched a savage attack on his superior. He was jailed and held for $300 bail.

Then there was Officer M. J. McCauley who decided that rather than patrol on a beautiful day in June, 1889, he would go boating instead. When he was noticed by passersby, he jumped into the water and reported, soaking wet, to the precinct that he had just rescued to drowning persons. The clever ploy did not fool the supervisors.

Despite some questionable officers in its early days, the men of the old station house protected the community well for over a century. By 1986 when the building was designated a landmark it was owned by the St. Luke African Methodist Episcopal Church. The church leases much of the space to medical offices.

Despite some missing ironwork on the roof and replacement windows, the grand old station house is in a remarkable state of preservation. The cream-colored imitation stone paint layer has been sand-blasted away and there is apparent dry rot to some of the mansard-level window framing and rusting on the upper cornice. Nonetheless, Nathaniel D. Bush’s 32nd Precinct Station House is, as the AIA Guide to New York City called it, “a wondrous Victorian survivor.”

The 1863 21st Precinct Station House - No. 327 East 22nd Street

photo by Alice Lum

In 1862, in addition to his duties as police sergeant, Nathaniel Bush was given another responsibility: official architect for the New York Police Department.  One of Bush’s first assignments was to design the 21st Precinct station house in what was known as the Gashouse District.

The area earned its names in the 1840s when gas tanks were built near the East River. The tanks often leaked, resulting in a disgusting odor that permeated the neighborhood.  As explained by Edward K. Spann in his The New Metropolis, “Who, but the poor and the disreputable, would live there? And so the city’s notorious Gashouse District was born.”

The policemen stationed at the 21st Street station house had the challenge of controlling disreputable thugs and crime-ridden dives. The area was populated by nearly penniless Irish immigrant workers who were joined, around this time, by Germans, Jews, and Italians who crowded into cheap tenements.

The station house that Bush designed, completed in 1863 at 327 East 22nd Street, was a handsome Italianate structure, five stories tall including the English basement. The restrained design included a classical closed pediment over the central doorway, bracketed brownstone sills on the tall windows and a deeply overhanging cornice. Handsome openwork wrought iron newel posts ornamented the steps rising from the sidewalk.

Shortly after its completion the station house doubled as headquarters for a battalion of the 7th New York Regiment under Colonel Lefferts. With the Civil War raging in the South, Lefferts was “charged with suppressing all mobs and riots, and will sternly use all means he has in doing so,” according to a report by Brevet Brigadier General H. Brown on July 16, 1863.

After the war, in 1868, Police Officer Alexander S. Williams was transferred to the 21st Precinct from Brooklyn where he had walked a beat for his first two years with the NYPD.  By now the neighborhood had grown worse, in part because of the notorious Gas House Gang that terrorized the area. According to Herbert Asbury in his The Gangs of New York, “Scarcely a night passed in which gangsters did not loot houses and stores and fight among themselves in the streets and dives, and the police were powerless to stop them.”  Criminals gathered in saloons like the “Rowdy Wall” to plot their offenses.

Williams did not believe in “powerless.”

According to station house lore, on this third day in the precinct and fed up with the openly criminal behavior of the gang, the officer purposely picked a fight with two thugs and clubbed them mercilessly with his baton. When other hoodlums tried to rescue their comrades, he beat them too.

Supposedly over the next four years Williams engaged in at least one bloody confrontation per day in his efforts to clean up the neighborhood. He was said to have tossed toughs through the window of the Florence Saloon.

Whether the stories became exaggerated in their retelling or not, Williams earned the nickname “Clubber.” He was long remembered for his philosophy that “there is more law in the end of a policeman’s night stick than a Supreme Court decision.”

The complaints of police brutality filed against Williams equaled the number of corruption charges. But Clubber Williams had successfully controlled the Gas House Gang that had bullied and terrorized the neighborhood so, rather than being dismissed, he was promoted to Captain in charge of the 21st Precinct in 1871.

Police Commissioner Rhinelander Waldo convened the Lexow Committee in 1874 to investigate evidence of Williams' accepting money and gifts from brothel owners and gamblers. One madame testified that she turned over to the captain $30,000 every year for protection. Other women with lesser operations told of $500 fees to open a house and between $25 to $50 per house thereafter.  Pool rooms paid as much as $300 and high class gambling houses paid more. He was partial owner in a brand of whiskey that saloons were forced to sell.

Amazingly, Williams managed to retain his command for another five years before being transferred to the West 29th Street station.

A decade later, in 1895, Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt who would stand for no corruption under his watch demanded Williams’ resignation. Clubber Williams retired with $1 million in the bank, a yacht on his $39,000 private dock, and a summer estate in Cos Cob, Connecticut. He had garnered his fortune, he explained, in Japanese real estate.

Despite Williams’ scandalous and unlawful behavior, he had to be credited for cleaning up the neighborhood. The October 1894 issue of St. Andrew’s Cross noted that the old Gas House District had “lost much of the element that made it of ill-repute during the days when recognized leaders in all sorts of organized crime made it their abode…The ‘Gas House Gang’ had found that their old stamping ground was made uncomfortable for them by the police.”

The succeeding police captain of the 21st Precinct had another issue to deal with, however: Tammany Hall. Charley Murphy was leader of the 18th Assembly district and Leslie’s Monthly Magazine noted that “Early in his career as a district leader, Murphy in a quiet way made it clear to the police and the citizens of his district that he was master there.”  Through intimidation the police captain became a puppet of Murphy.

“A pool room opened in his district,” reported Leslie’s Monthly, “and a woman went to Murphy and complained that her husband was losing all his wages in the new gambling place.” Murphy went to the captain saying “Put it out of my district.”

Before the end of the day the pool room was closed for good.

One commanding officer, Captain Smith attempted to defy Murphy. In 1896 the Raines Law was enacted that prohibited the sale of liquor on Sundays. Murphy owned three saloons. When the captain ordered Murphy to close his saloons on Sundays, he refused. Smith did the unthinkable. He arrested a Tammany leader.

Murphy had himself appointed Commissioner of Docks then went to the Police Board saying “Put Smith on the boat and keep him there. I want him right under my window, where I can keep my eye on him.”

Captain Smith was transferred from the 21st Precinct to the Police Steamboat Patrol where he served under the eye of Murphy for four years.

Roosevelt’s reformations took hold and graft and corruption were increasingly exposed. In 1901 the City Club of New York demanded answers when, on February 21, businessmen in the 21st Precinct hosted a dinner at $10 a plate for the new Police Captain Cooney and presented him with a diamond-studded badge.

In 1908 Captain Stephen McDermott, known as “Battleaxe Steve,” was in command of the 21st Precinct. He described the district as “pretty tough quarters around here.” But, he told a New York Times reporter, “I never feel any animosity or bitterness toward the criminals with whom I come in contact. The way they live, the traditions they have, all make it almost impossible for them to be anything except what they are.”

Although in 1912 there were still 37 brothels (or “disorderly houses”) within the confines of the precinct, the 162 officers diligently fought crime. The 9,500 arrests made in 1913 were the most of any precinct in the city.

But by now the aging station house was in bad shape.

That same year an investigative committee appointed by the City Alderman reported that ventilation was nearly non-existent. A subsequent inspection in January 1914 said the building “is very old and out of date…There should be a new station house, with a modern jail having a department for women.”

By October the jail in the house was condemned and prisoners were no longer held here.

It would not be until 1952 that the precinct–now renumbered the 13th Precinct–moved into a new building on East 21st Street.

Today the building from which Clubber Williams reigned over the Gas House District houses Green Chimneys’ “Gramercy Residence at Ungar House.”  It functions as a foster care group residence for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning young people–16 to 20 years of age–in a supervised setting.

According to Green Chimneys, the purpose of the Gramercy Residence is to “enable older adolescents in foster care to function in the urban community independently and successfully” and to serve as a transition for older youth growing out of the foster care system.

Little has changed to the exterior of the old 21st Precinct Station House. Yet hardly anyone passing by it knows of its rich history and the remarkable stories that played out inside its walls.

UPDATE:  The structure was demolished in 2023.

The 1881 5th Precinct Station House -- No. 19 Elizabeth Street

photo by Alice Lum

The New York City Police Department got its money’s worth in Sergeant Nathaniel Bush. From 1862 until 1895, when the sergeant was not capturing hooligans or arresting women of disrepute he was designing station houses.

As the official architect for the NYPD Bush was responsible for precinct houses across the city. On June 23, 1879, the groundwork was laid for yet one more.

On that date the Commissioners of the Sinking Fund appropriated land “on the west side of Elizabeth street, one hundred feet south of Canal street, being fifty feet front and rear by ninety-four feet deep, as a site for the erection of a new station-house for the police force of the Sixth Precinct.”

The Sixth Precinct was in dire need of a new station house. As the population of mostly poor immigrants crowded into the area, crime rose heavily. Gambling among the Chinese was rampant, especially a game known as fan-tan (in March of that year, Captain Brogan led 45 patrolmen and two detectives into Ah Wong’s grocery at 13 Mott where they raided a fan-tan operation in the back room); but gambling was the least of the problems.

A Times reporter surveyed the precinct on foot in 1880 and described the tenements “with filth hanging out of windows like icicles” and “filled with Germans, Jews and Italians” who worked menial jobs. A reporter from the New York Sun wrote “The lower end of Mott Street is an unsavory locality, disagreeably close to the associations of vice, crime, and poverty by reason of which the Chinese are unjustly but naturally compelled by mere proximity to bear a worse reputation than they deserve.”

Despite the urgency for a new station house, the gears of bureaucracy ground slowly. Nine months elapsed before the Sinking Fund took measurements to enable the project to go forward. Another year passed before, on April 8, 1881, the $39,951 construction contract aws awarded to builder Joseph Ross.

Finally on April 17, 1882 the new 6th Precinct station house was opened, under the command of Captain Jeremiah Petty. Bush designed a noble Italianate building five bays wide, its windows capped by Renaissaice-inspired pediments. A series of four pilasters rose the length of the four stories, sectioning the façade and providing verticality. On either side of the entrance stairs two cast iron gas lamps identified the police station.

An 1893 visit by a State Senate committee resulted in a mixed report. There were sixteen cells for women (4-1/2 by 7 feet with “low ceilings” and each with a water closet) with two matrons on duty. But the committee found them “without one particle of ventilation, not even from a window, light being admitted to the corridor through a sky-light which we were informed by those in attendance is never opened.”

The cells, along with the 12 cells for men, the corridors and rooms were “heated by ordinary stoves—still more vitiating the alleged atmosphere.”

Augustine Costello, in his 1885 “Our Police Protectors,” disagreed. “It is the finest in the city except the First Precinct Station House, and is a handsome roomy structure, admirably adopted to Police purposes,” he said.

The 6th Precinct House as it appeared in 1885 -- print from "Our Police Protectors" (copyright expired)

Costello went on to describe the progress the police had already made. “The ‘Bloody Sixth’ no longer exists…It was mainly a slum of the city, and some parts of the present district need purging. In old times its polyglot and parti-colored population huddled together in kennels, not fit for street curs, in the neighborhood of the Five Points.”

The 6th Precinct was plagued by the violent Chinese secret society known as the Gee Kon Tong, familiarly referred to simply as “The Tong.” In 1900 The New York Times called it the pool room syndicate of Chinatown, saying that “Under its rule fan-tan tables flourish along Mott and Pell Streets, and depots for lottery tickets, flanked by opium dens, do a thriving business.”

The station house in 1900, the year The Times exposed the Tong to its readers -- photo NYPL Collection

A reporter visited the second floor of 21 Pell Street where “Back of the fan-tan room was a place for smoking opium. Those who lost their money in the game sought consolation here, and every passing hour increased the number of prostrate figures that lay around the room.”

The reporter’s guide scoffed at the inaction of the 6th Precinct. “There are dozens of dens running in full blast now. The police know it as well as I do, and they can stop it whenever they wish. Most of the patrolmen and ward detectives of the precinct know exactly where the places are. They go in when they like. But the men who manage the games know they are safe, and that their $15 per week will be well used by the chief of the Gee Kon Tong.”

A violent gang war broke out among factions of the Tong that lasted for years. As late as 1909 the precinct captain was frustrated in his efforts to arrange a truce as the murder of Chinese gang members continued.

In 1911 the station house, by now renumbered as the 5th Precinct, was modernized with the installation of a police patrol telephone booth at the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge with direct lines to Police Headquarters and the precinct desk.

Throughout the 20th century Chinatown gradually grew, pushing the German and Italian neighborhoods out and engulfing the 5th Precinct. In the 1960s the Police Department initiated efforts to replace the aging structure which were vigorously challenged by the community. In 1968 the residents won their first round in their fight to preserve the building.

Despite the loss of the cast iron gas lamps, renovations to the "decrepit" station house brought it back to its 19th Century appearance -- photo by Alice Lum

Again, in 1972, the Deputy Commissioner noted that one of the department's “top priorities” was a new 5th Precinct station house to replace the existing one, which he described as being in “decrepit condition.” And once again the community won out – saving the century-old structure.

Nathaniel Bush placed the date of construction prominently above the entrance -- photo by Alice Lum

Rather than being demolished, the 5th Precinct station house was modernized and renovated. While much of the interior detailing is gone, beautifully-carved oaken staircases and newel posts remain and touches of Nathaniel Bush’s original design survive.

The 1887 19th Precinct Station House -- 153 East 67th Street

In the early 1880s, the 28th Precinct faced a problem. When the station house on 59th Street was constructed in 1851 the precinct, covering 58th Street to 79th Street and Fifth Avenue east to the river, was sparsely populated. There was little need for a major police presence.

Now, however, the area was developed and the station house, which The New York Times called “a little ramshackle structure,” was not large enough to accommodate the number of officers necessary to patrol the area. The precinct included a diverse population, from the 12,000 cigar makers who lived in the new tall tenements houses to “homes as happy as comfort and culture can make them,” on the west side, according to The Times. “But,” the newspaper said, “nevertheless, the streets in the eastern part of the precinct area infested with gangs of the worst ruffians in the city. They live in shanties built on the rocks and make themselves a terror to the neighborhood. They figure in the police courts as sneak thieves, pickpockets and vagrants.”

Residents petitioned the Commissioner for a new, larger station house with additional officers and when General Grant joined in, officials took notice. The city reserved a lot of land on East 67th Street where a new fire headquarters was planned, and the Board of Apportionment appropriated $70,000 for the structure.

Police sergeant Nathaniel Bush, who was responsible for designing the force’s new station houses from 1862 to 1895, laid out the plans and specifications. What he put on paper was much grander than what the Board of Apportionment had envisioned. The Times said “He put on paper a station house…much superior to anything of the kind now in the city.”

With accommodations for 150 policemen, it was a four-story Italian edifice of red brick with bluestone copings and terra cotta trimmings. Bush combined styles, drawing upon Second Empire, Romanesque Revival (specifically the German Rudbogenstil substyle), Neo-Grec and Renaissance Revival. The AIA Guide to New York City would later tall it a “Victorian palazzo…borrowing heavily from the Florentine Renaissance.”

The first floor would house the Sergeants’ desk and waiting room, and the Captain’s room. The second and third floor were reserved for dormitories for the officers and sleeping rooms for four sergeants. “The upper floor will be devoted to a gymnasium for the patrolmen, modeled on the one that the Seventh Regiment boys develop their limbs and strengthen their muscles with in the big armory,” said the newspaper.

Bush included up-to-the-minute innovations such as electric signals connecting the station house to all the schools, hospitals and other institutions to ensure prompt response and a prison connected to the building rather than adjoining it and lined with sheet iron “in order that the howlings of noisy drunken people locked in the cells shall not be heard in the school close by, or by people passing in the street.”

The ambitious building was estimated at $110,000; significantly higher than the appropriation.

Rather than compromise the precinct’s needs, the Commissioners decided to hold off on construction until the additional funds could be found.

Finally, on June 21, 1886 plans were filed with the Department of Buildings and construction began in December. Less than a year later it was completed and the officers moved in on November 30, 1887 – now called the 25th Precinct Station House after the department’s renumbering of the precincts in January 1887.

In April of the next year, Joseph Gilmartin (who sometimes went by the last name Murray) was arrested for horse stealing. None of Nathaniel Bush’s modern innovations mattered in the face of human complacence, however, and Gilmartin walked out of his cell to freedom without being noticed. “The turnkeys of the station will probably be obliged to stand trial,” said The Times.

The station house in 1920, showing the original entrance and the Fire Headquarters next door.  NYPL Collection

Throughout the 20th Century the station house served the community, although, as with most civic buildings, problems arose. In August 1926 the state prison commissioner condemned the conditions for prisoners, saying the cells were “insanitary.”

By the 1970s the station house, now the 19th Precinct (it was renumbered the 31st in 1908, changed to 10A in 1924 and finally the 19th in 1929) had become dowdy and obsolete. Concurrently Hunter College planned an expansion, eyeing the site of the station house and the old fire headquarters building next door. The city began plans for new facilities at other locations and in 1974 the old prison building behind the station house was demolished.

The Landmarks Preservation Commission stepped in, designating and protecting four 19th Century structures including the station house, as landmarks. When the fire and police departments protested, the Board of Estimate overturned the designation in June 1980 to enable the demolition of the buildings.

The several agencies involved met, however, and Hunter College architects Ulrich Franzen & Associates proposed a solution. The rear of the vintage structures would be razed, the facades would be restored and a new structure erected behind them. The approved project under the guidance of the Department of General Services resulted in joining of the police station and the firehouse by a five-story granite structure 30 feet back from the sidewalk.. The station house now uses the upper stories of the old fire headquarters. The Hunter College portion, separate from the two civic buildings, was completed in 1986.

Carl Stein of Stein Partnership, along with structural engineer Robert Silman, spearheaded the renovation of the fire and police stations. The 19th Precinct House was cleaned, a new porch with handicapped access was installed, and the original metal cornice, too damaged for restoration, was replaced by a fiberglass copy. The renovations were completed in 1992 and the station house was re-designated a landmark in 1998.

Other than the new porch, the façade of Nathaniel Bush’s grand police station is essentially unchanged.