23rd Police Precinct Station House (now Traffic Control Division)

STATUS Designated Individual Landmark

134-138 West 30th Street

ARCHITECT: R. Thomas Short

DATE: 1907-08

STYLE: Medieval Revival

Guastavino tile Police Precinct Station

Designation: December 15, 1998

*This station house served the legendary Tenderloin section of midtown Manhattan that was previously part of the 19th Precinct, one of the city’s busiest. The police had occupied a smaller station house across the street since 1869. One of the first station houses constructed in Manhattan for the Police Department following the Consolidation of Greater New York, it was one of the earliest in New York to solely employ automobile patrols.

Four stories high plus a mezzanine story, the building has a prominent base of light gray rusticated granite arranged as simulated towers; a central automobile entrance, with an arched Guastavino tile vault, that leads to the recessed doorway and central courtyard area beyond; and upper stories, faced in buff ironspot Roman brick, that terminate in a bold bracketed cornice and crenellated roof parapet. The building has remained in continuous use by the Police Department, and now serves the Traffic Control Division.

*Excerpt from the Landmarks Preservation Commission Designation Report

STATUS Designated Individual Landmark

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Today’s Madison Square North neighborhood reflects successive waves of development, the earliest dating to the year Madison Square Park was created—1847. Until very recently, the neighborhood comprised almost exclusively buildings that pre-date 1930. From the park’s opening through the 1920s, Madison Square North evolved from...

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