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  The Fifth Precinct had been located at No. 49 Leonard Street for years and its station house was outdated and inadequate.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

Hunt & Hunt's 1911 1st Precinct -- 100 Old Slip

photo by Alice Lum

On New Year’s Day, 1883, newly-elected mayor Franklin Edsen set out on a campaign of civic improvement.  Among his proposals was the demolition of outdated, rundown police station houses and the erection of new ones.  Only eight months later, on August 11, The Record and Guide announced that “The work of driving piles for the foundation of the new First Precinct Station House has been completed; the building will occupy the site of the old Franklin Market in Old Slip.”  The paper said the cost of the new building would be about $47,000—a considerable $1 million today.

The pilings mentioned by The Record and Guide were necessary because of the site’s proximity to the East River.  However the location between Water Street and South Street on Old Slip was well chosen.  The waterfront bustled with activity as ships were loaded and unloaded.  The sailors from these vessels came ashore looking for entertainment—and they found it.

In 1882 James D. McCabe described Water Street.  “Strains of music float out into the night air, and about the doors and along the sidewalks stand groups of hideous women, waiting to entice sailors into these hells, where they are made drunk with drugged liquors, robbed of their money and valuables, and turned helpless into the streets.  Groups of drunken and foul-mouthed men and boys lounge about the street, bandying vile jests with the women, and often insulting respectable passers-by.”

At the time architects of police buildings and schools were less concerned about functionality and working conditions than the structures' outward appearance.  The new 1^st Precinct, most likely designed by Nathaniel Bush, attempted to correct those problems—but according to some critics it missed the mark regarding handsome architecture.  On March 15, 1884 The Real Estate Record & Builders’ Guide spit its criticism of the new 1^st Precinct Station House.

“Some injudicious praises in the daily papers of a station house lately finished in Old Slip for the headquarters of the First Precinct induced the hope that this might constitute an exception to the rule  Unhappily it is an unusually atrocious example of the rule, being in fact more offensive than the ordinary station house in the degree in which it is bigger and more pretentious.  The internal disposition and the arrangements for ventilation and sanitation are fondly dwelt upon by the reporters.  We are willing to believe that the station house is all that can be desired in these respects, and that practically it serves its purpose admirable.  But our business is with its architecture, which is worse than a minus quantity being positively offensive.”

The building survived almost a quarter of a century before architects Hunt & Hunt were called in to design a replacement.  If critics had panned the previous building; they would have nothing to complain about in the Hunt brothers’ design.

The new building commanded attention The American Architect, September 24, 1913 (copyright expired)

Completed in 1911 after two years of construction, it was a four-story Italian palazzo.  Three floors of smooth limestone blocks contrasted with the planar top story, capped by a striking cornice trimmed with copper antefixae.  High above the entrance the architects placed a large carved cartouche containing the Seal of the City of New York and the date of construction.

Hunt & Hunt laid out the station house based on functionality -- The American Architect, September 24, 1913 (copyright expired)

The men of the 1^st Precinct found themselves not only fighting waterfront crime; but a myriad of problems related to its location.  Officer William J. McKeever attempted to stop a runaway horse in April 1919, succeeding only after being dragged.  But many of the precinct’s responses would be more dire.

photo by Alice Lum

The Socialist Movement had already grown roots in America by the time the station house was completed; but the 1917 Russian Revolution added fire to the passion of the working class who organized unions and strikes to make their voices heard.

On July 18, 1919, just as the workforce was preparing to go home for the day, the crews of the Municipal ferryboats to Staten Island walked off the job in a bid for increased pay.  Then, as now, New Yorkers depended on public transportation and a near riot ensued.

The New-York Tribune reported the following morning “thousands of Staten Islanders stood in the rain outside the slips, looking longingly at the far-away bulk of their homeland and wondering more and more audibly how they were ever going to get to it.  The crowd increased so rapidly in size and exasperation that reserves from the First Precinct were called to handle it.”

The newspaper described the chaos faced by the policemen.  “These held the crowd back and kept shouting advice to the would-be passengers, urging them to go to Staten Island by way of Brooklyn or New Jersey.  A few took the counsel.  Most of them remained.”

It was a tense time in New York.  Anarchist groups like the Black Hand terrorized civilians with letter and package bombs on an almost weekly basis.  Only two months before the ferry strike, the First Precinct detectives examined a suspicious package, thought to be a bomb.

The package was taken by detectives to the First Precinct on May 1, “and there, in the presence of numerous photographers, reporters and policemen, cautiously proceeded to open it,” reported the New-York Tribune.  This time it was a false alarm.  “It proved to be legislative manual sent to Judge Philbin from the office of the Secretary of State of New York.”

Prohibition would not officially take effect until January 17, 1920; but bootleggers were busy months before in preparation.  During the first week of January Officer Emil Zipf “discovered Gus Eronson, a sailor on a ship from Brockton, Mass., who was found in the Cortlandt Street terminal station in a peculiar condition,” recounted The Evening World on January 6.

Zipf immediately identified the problem:  “wood alcohol.”

It took a doctor, Zipf, and four special policemen to get the belligerent drunk into an ambulance.  In court he complained to Assistant District Attorney McGuire “I’d be all right if they left me alone and didn’t beat me up.”

He insisted “But I only had three drinks of one-half of one percent beer.”

As the sailor had been fingerprinted, Captain Lee sarcastically asked him, “How do you take your beer?  Straight or with seltzer.”

“Out of the bottle,” was the reply.

On the night of May 15, 1928 at around 11:30 Patrolman Edward M. Lee jumped into the East River off Coenties Slip to save a man from drowning. He earned a commendation for his bravery.  Another officer, Ferdinand A. Berthold, would gain even more attention for his actions that year.

 

The neighborhood around the station house was still gritty when Berthold and Lee were working here -- photographer unknown, from the collection of the Museum of the City of New York http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult_VPage&VBID=24UAYWW3TT66&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=915

On the same day that Lee plunged into the river, five gunmen held up Needham Sweets Shops and made off with $2,785.  Berthold pursued them in a patrol car.  The robbers fired their guns at the officer, but he fired back only once because, he told reporters later “the streets were so crowded.”

Berthold was correct in his assessing the danger.  The single bullet he fired “hit the robbers’ car, ricocheted and struck [Stephen J.] Porter as he came out of his building,” reported The New York Times.  The businessman was struck in the leg and although his wound was superficial, he was taken to the Broad Street Hospital for treatment.

When the chase reached Washington Street, the gunmen abandoned their car and fled in separate directions.  Four of the robbers escaped, but Officer Berthold arrested  24-year old Horatio Sjambati, alias James Moreno.  The Times said “The prisoner has a police record as a burglar, according to the police.”

Within a month Berthold was back in the newspapers.  Like Officer Lee, he jumped into the East River to save a drowning man—except this rescue seems to have been a bit more troublesome.  The New York Times reported “Patrolman Ferdinand A. Berthold, who weighs 140 pounds, dived into the East River off Old Slip last night and rescued a drowning man, six feet tall and weighing 225 pounds.”

The heavy-set man had fallen off Pier 9 and the screams of passersby caught the officer’s attention.  “Berthold discarded his cap, coat and shoes, jumped into the water and was soon pulling the victim to shore,” said the newspaper.

But it was not all that simple.  While he waited for the Police Emergency Squad to arrive, Berthold hung onto the piling of the dock with one hand and onto the semi-conscious “burden” with the other.  Finally the squad lowered a rope ladder and pulled the men to safety.  Bernard Thornton, 53-years old, was taken to Bellevue Hospital.  He was the captain of a coal barge currently in dry dock.

“Berthold went home after being treated for submersion,” said the newspaper.

Obviously, not all the responses by 1^st Precinct police would end so positively.  At 10:50 on the morning of September 23, 1937, Patrolman John H. A. Wilson attempted to apprehend three armed hold-up men at No. 65 Fulton Street.  The heroic officer was shot and died two days later.

photo by Alice Lum

In 1973 Chief Inspector Michael J. Codd “shut a chapter of police history,” according to David W. Dunlap of The New York Times, when he gave the order “Close Old Slip.”  Once called “the most important police district in the world” by A. E. Costello in his 1885 Out Police Protectors, the 62-year old station house had completed its service.

The closing came after a regrettable period of corruption was discovered in 1972.  Suspected of taking bribes from street vendors and construction contractors, 97 of the 110 officers in the 1^st Precinct were transferred.  The 1^st Precinct was moved to the old 4^th Precinct station house on Ericsson Place (coincidentally a similar Italian Renaissance building constructed a year after the 1^st Precinct).

Two decades later, in 1993, the vacant building was taken over as headquarters of the Landmarks Preservation Commission.  The Commission remained in the building for eight years; when a $4 million renovation transformed it to the New York City Police Museum.

A private, non-profit organization, the museum offers the public a window into the history of the police department.  In addition to countless historic articles; visitors are given a chance to test their skills in a virtual firing range and to sit in a jail cell.

photo by Alice Lum

Dwarfed by the modern skyscrapers that have risen around it, Hunt & Hunt’s magnificent and monumental 1^st Precinct Station House survives handsomely intact.

The 1912 20th Street Police Station -- 230 West 20th Street

By 1908, conditions at the outdated 17^th Precinct station house at 230 West 20^th Street had become deplorable.   The official inspection report presented to the New York State Commission of Prisons that year was scathing.

The 10 cells are underground and air is very bad.  In rear of cells is policemen’s toilet room, (also underground) with opening into cell-room.  Only means of ventilation seemed to be small ducts.  The smell was bad.

The officers’ quarters upstairs are inadequate.  One lieutenant’s room has substantially no ventilation except into another bed-room.

The following year an investigator noted that the precinct (now numbered the 18^th) was in dire need of modernization or replacement.  “The complement of officers is 88, with four dormitories containing sixty beds.  Their wash room has iron troughs for lavatory purposes, which should be changed for those of enameled iron.”

Finally, on May 9, 1912 the Police Commissioner submitted plans for the construction of a new station house, prison and garage to the Sinking Fund Commissioners. 

Architects Hoppin & Koen had designed the new Police Headquarters building at 240 Centre Street, completed just three years earlier.  The monumental Beaux Arts palace for cops took four years to construct and earned the architects a firm footing when the issue of civic commissions arose thereafter.

As their 4^th Precinct Station House (later to become the 1^st Precinct) was being completed—looking more like a Medici palazzo than a police precinct—they received the commission for the 20^th Street building.

Like the 4^th Precinct, the architects drew on the Italian Renaissance for inspiration.  The 18^th Precinct house in the working class Chelsea area, however, would be much scaled down.  The directions in the Police Commissioner’s plans called for nothing elaborate or overly-costly.

“The interior trim is to be of oak, simple and plain.  The plumbing fixtures are to be of a standard manufacture.  The building is to be wired and piped for electricity and gas, the lighting fixtures are to be of a standard manufacture easily replaced.”

Completed later that year, the precinct house rose five stories over an American basement, invisible from the street.  The high, symmetrical first floor was clad in rusticated granite with three large arched openings—a centered entrance, a garage door for the single motorized vehicle assigned to the precinct, and a large window.

A terra cotta flagpole base in the shape of the New York City seal provided the sole decorative element of the mid-section of the structure.  Two carved cartouches that announced the precinct number flanked the fifth floor, and a handsome, bracketed cornice sat above a tidy row of dentil molding. 

For its budget of $174,825 including architectural fees, the Commission got a dignified stone-faced police station worthy of more affluent neighborhoods.

Hoppin & Koen provided for up-to-the-minute amenities.  An elevator shaft with sliding doors was provided (although the elevator never materialized) and in the basement the foundation for a garage turntable was installed that would allow the police vehicle to be garaged head-first, turned around, and driven out head-first as well.  That, too, never materialized.

The new station house could accommodate both male and female prisoners, unlike the former structure for men-only.    The first floor was double-height in the common areas where the desk and visitor areas were located.  To the rear it was split into two levels to accommodate the two tiers of cells, as well as the muster room, Matron’s quarters on the mezzanine, and sitting room.

The second floor contained the accommodations for the supervisors:  the Captain’s bedroom and bath, three lieutenant’s rooms for the six lieutenants, six sergeant’s rooms for the twelve sergeants, detectives’ rooms and lavatories.

The top three floors contained two dormitories each, with lavatories and showers.  Each dorm could sleep twenty officers.

Although conditions for the officers of the 18^th Precinct drastically improved with their new station house, things continued to be hard for many of the citizens they protected.   While there were still middle-class homes along the side streets, the vast western portions of the precinct along the Hudson River were inhabited by miserably poor immigrant families.

When two officers were alerted of a “mother and children suffering from the gross neglect and abuse of a drunken husband and father” in 1912, they proceeded to 439 West 19^th Street to investigate.  Here, in a single furnished room in the basement, the Michael Kearens family lived.   The Irish immigrant laborer had been out of work for a year and his wife, Bridget, had attempted to support the family until her health failed.

The police report noted that the officers “found a most awful condition of affairs; the room was in a vile and wretched condition; litter of all kinds scattered about the floor, and heaps of rubbish in the corners.  There was but one bed in the room, and this in an indescribable condition of filth, and upon it Mrs. Kearens was lying with her infant son, six months of age.  She was emaciated and so weak that she could scarcely raise herself in bed.  The infant was suffering from convulsions.”  There were three other children in the house—John, Mary and Michael, 11, 9 and 6 years old.

As the officers waited for an ambulance to arrive, Michael Kearens returned home.  “He was in a beastly state of intoxication,” said the report, “and in the most profane and abusive language demanded to know what officers were doing in his room.”  Kearens was eventually arrested and taken to the 18^th Precinct station house, charged with intoxication and disorderly conduct “he being too drunk to be sent to the Night Court.”  Doctors at Bellevue Hospital diagnosed Bridget with tuberculosis and the infant with spinal meningitis.

Later investigation revealed that the Kearens were $35 behind on their rent, but were allowed to stay on “only because of the condition of the mother and sympathy for her.”  Neighbors deemed Kearens a “confirmed drunkard,” and he received a sentence of six months in the workhouse.  Bridget Kearnes survived less than a month after being admitted to the hospital.

Along with the problems associated with the impoverished residents, police had to deal with gangsters.  In 1914 the precinct was riddled with several gangs, among them the Hudson Dusters, the Owney Maddens and the Marginals.  

One such outlaw was “Big Jim” Redmond, president of the Hudson Dusters, a gang referred to by The New York Times as “notorious West Side hoodlums.”    On December 9, 1914, “Big Jim” met his match in Police Officer Sindt.

The previous night a Belgian sailor of the Red Star Liner Kroonsland was passing Redmond’s residence at 405 West 18^th Street.  A woman in the doorway enticed the sailor to come up and as he did, Big Jim jumped out, pushed a gun into the pit of the sailor's stomach and demanded all his money.

Redmond got the Belgian’s entire $4.50.

Hearing the complaint, Officer Sindt went to Redmond’s door, putting other policemen on guard, and burst in.  He trust his revolver against the gangster’s side, grabbed up the gun lying at the bedside, and marched the prisoner off to the station house.

Heroism was another part of life at the 20^th Street Station House.  On February 10, 1916 Officer Fisher noticed smoke rising from the doorway of Spiegel Brothers’ "3, 9 and 19-cent store" at 183-187 8^th Avenue.  By the time Officer Odell joined him, they realized that eight children, ten women and several men were trapped on the roof of the burning building.

The officers rushed to the top floor of the adjacent building and used their nightsticks to force apart the iron window bars of the rear offices, breaking their sticks in the process.  They then spanned the space between the two buildings with a plank and one-by-one “led a terror-stricken group from the roof to safety,” as reported by The Evening World.

On October 12, 1917, Chief Inspector George McLaughlin paid a visit to the station house.  He noted that there was an average of four prisoners in the cell area every day with sometimes as many as 10 or 12 being held over for morning court.  That year so far the 18^th Precinct had made 2,516 arrests and summonses.

McLaughlin was more impressed with the physical conditions.  “Each cell has a toilet, wash basin and one bunk.  The toilets are flushed with push buttons.  There are steam heat and electric light throughout and the cell rooms are equipped with a fan ventilator.  “The jail was clean, showing excellent care,” he reported.

With the United States’ entry into World War I, the station house was designated as one of the Air Raid Stations in case of enemy air attack.   An emergency dressing station was set up in the precinct and the commanding officer, a lieutenant, one sergeant and nine patrolmen were trained in emergency procedures should the catastrophe occur.

The house was inspected again on October 19, 1920.  Now eight years old, the building was still in outstanding shape, according to Henry Solomon.  “This is a modern and up-to-date police station…since my last inspection the place has been painted throughout and is now in first-class condition.”

A large terra cotta City Seal serves as the base for the flagpole while two large, carved cartouches beneath the cornice announced the precinct number.

The inspector commented on the female prisoners' accommodations, as well.  “there is a marble lined shower bath and a room for matrons, adjoining which is a toilet room.  The cells are well located having plenty of light and air.”

Solomon was highly impressed with the innovative work of one lieutenant.  The inspector made special note that he “looks after wayward children in the precinct, preventing if possible their arrest and subsequent conviction and incarceration.  I believe it to be a very good and praiseworthy work.”

The lieutenant’s idea perhaps planted the seed for today’s Youth Officer position, common in most NYPD precincts.

By the beginning of 1922, the New York City Police Department recognized a problem.  The rapidly increasing number of motor vehicles was vying for road space with horse-drawn vehicles and motorists often drove recklessly and at high speeds.   To address the situation the Traffic Bureau was organized.

On January 15 of that year the 18^th Precinct was eliminated as the police force did a city-wide realignment of precincts.  The station house at 230 West 20^th Street became headquarters for The 14th Inspection District for traffic purposes, comprising the Boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx.  By July the new bureau had devised a means of controlling traffic violations:  the Traffic Warning Card.

The card, which would eventually become today’s driver’s license, was required for any driver of a horse-drawn or motor vehicle on a “street, parkway, park drive, park street or bridge.”  The card held five blank spaces and whenever an officer stopped the driver for a violation, it was noted in one of the spaces.   When all of the spaces on the driver’s card were filled, he was liable to arrest or summons.

The Traffic Warning Card was the precursor of today's Driver's License.

By 1941 the department had reorganized once again and the 20^th Street Station House was once again a patrol precinct—now the 10^th Precinct.

As times changed, the police force and the 10^th Precinct were forced to change too.  On June 28, 1969 the course of gay history would change forever when the Stonewall riots took place in the 6^th Precinct, just south of the 10^th.   At the time, the Chelsea neighborhood of the 10^th Precinct was still relatively rough-edged, encompassing the meat packing district, blocks of factories, public housing projects and 19^th century brick and brownstone residences long ago converted to tenement housing.  The bulk of Manhattan’s gay population lived in the 6^th Precinct, separated from the 10^th by 14^th Street.

The cops of the 10^th Precinct had an uneasy and sometimes contentious relationship with the gay population and it all came to a head on August 9, 1973 when 200 gays marched from Greenwich Village to the West 20^th Street Police Station to protest alleged harassment.   Newsman and camera crews were there to report the outcome, one which was handled deftly by commanding officer Captain Robert Boetig.

Boetig promised the Gay Activists Alliance that “there have been cases where there has been friction,” but “there is no deliberate policy of harassment.”  The captain acknowledged that “the gay liberation movement is a somewhat new arrival” in his precinct and initiated a procedure whereby various policemen would meet occasionally with leaders of the gay community in the 6^th Precinct.

The 10^th Precinct community today covers a broad range of ethnicities, social-economic levels, religions, and sexual preferences.  The precinct continues to adapt and serve the residents it protects.

In the meantime, while there have been some minor alterations to the exterior—the broad fan lights above the first floor openings are gone and the expansive window has been blocked up—Hoppin & Koen’s handsome Italian Renaissance police station remains essentially unchanged since 1912.

non-credited photographs taken 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.