A one-story police station of buff brick in the streamline Art Deco manner, its ornament carried almost entirely by the brickwork itself. Over the entrance a tall vertical pylon rises above the parapet, a projecting POLICE sign mounted on its face, and stepped courses of corbeled brick — sawtooth bands that step out and back — run above the windows and around the corner piers. A deep recessed entrance porch is framed by square brick piers beneath a flat canopy. A streamline copper wall lantern brackets one corner, and a cast-iron light standard with a Greek-key collar stands on the lawn. The windows are boarded now, the buff brick streaked, the parapet sprouting volunteer trees.
The Ninth District Police Station was built in 1936, one of six Art Deco district stations the city put up in 1936-37 to a common plan. All six were designed by Albert Osburg, chief architect of the city's Board of Public Service, who had already shown his command of the style at Homer G. Phillips Hospital. Osburg let the buildings' own streamlined massing and their functional parts — signage, railings, stepped brickwork — carry the design; three, including this one, were clad in buff brick and three in a grayer brick. When the St. Louis police consolidated their nine districts into three in the early 1990s, the little stations were left behind. This one has stood empty since about 1980, its Midtown surroundings largely cleared; the Washington Metropolitan AME Church across the street later bought it, sealed it, and has kept it standing.
