Police Headquarters

A stone-clad civic block at the corner of Tucker and Clark, designed in the manner of a Renaissance palazzo — part office building, part fortress. Mauran, Russell & Crowell gave it walls built to look impregnably thick and a formal, polished-stone lobby behind a single controlled entrance. Inside, the hierarchy was plain: the police board's wood-paneled room and hearing chamber took the top floor, the chief's corner office the one below, and the homicide detectives' floor held metal holding cells and windowless interrogation rooms designed to feel like there was no way out.

The building went up during the hard years of Prohibition, when the violence of the era gave the St. Louis Metropolitan Police the highest toll of fallen officers in its history and the city resolved to build a modern headquarters. The firm of Mauran, Russell & Crowell — architects of the Railway Exchange Building and other downtown blocks — drew the plans, and the headquarters opened in 1927 at the corner of Tucker (then Twelfth Street) and Clark Avenue. It served as the department's home for 87 years. Nearly everything happened here: booking and holding, line-ups, a firing range, the homicide squad's interrogations, and the police board that governed the force. In 2014 the department moved to a former Wells Fargo office tower at 1915 Olive, and the old headquarters was left largely vacant. The city chose to keep the building rather than raze it and set about finding a new use for it.