Former Police Headquarters Building

About this property

240 Centre Street, formerly the New York City Police Headquarters, is a building in the Little Italy neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, United States. Designed by the firm Hoppin & Koen, it was the headquarters of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) from 1909 to 1973. Afterward, it was converted into a luxury residential building in 1988 by the firm Ehrenkranz Group & Eckstut, becoming the Police Building Apartments. 240 Centre Street occupies an entire city block between Centre Street to the west, Broome Street to the north, Centre Market Place to the east, and Grand Street to the south. It is a New York City designated landmark and on the National Register of Historic Places. 240 Centre Street was designed in a mixture of the Baroque and Renaissance Revival styles. The structure is clad in limestone and granite. The primary elevation of the facade is along Centre Street, where there is a central portico topped by a dome and flanked by two wings. There is also a porte-cochère to the north, a second portico to the south, and a second entrance to the east. Inside are five above-ground stories and two basement levels. The basements originally contained shooting ranges and mechanical rooms, while the first three stories were used almost exclusively as clerical offices. There was also an armory and drill room on the fourth floor and a telegraph center on the fifth floor. In the 1980s, when the building was converted into 56 (later 55) luxury apartments, the interiors were gutted and rebuilt. Most of the residential units are studio apartments and one- to four-bedroom apartments, and there is also some community space and retail space. 240 Centre Street replaced an older building nearby on Mulberry Street, which had been completed in 1862. Following the 1898 consolidation of the five boroughs into the City of Greater New York, the NYPD also expanded and needed a new headquarters building. Although a site on Centre Market Place was identified in 1903, construction did not begin for two years due to negotiations over funding and the building's location. After a further delay caused by the construction of a nearby subway line, 240 Centre Street formally opened on November 27, 1909. Over the subsequent years, there were several proposals to relocate the headquarters, and the NYPD moved some departments to a nearby building. The NYPD headquarters moved to One Police Plaza in 1973. As proposals for a cultural center and a luxury hotel fell through, the building was abandoned for a decade before being sold to Fourth Jeffersonian Associates in 1984. The structure was then converted into a residential building, a project that was completed in 1988.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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