Fourth (now First) Precinct Station House

16 Ericsson Place | also 19 Varick Street, 14 Beach Street | Tribeca | built 1912

Open on the map4 entries

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

1. 1907

   The city buys the corner of Varick Street and Ericsson Place for a new police station

   In 1907 the city saw that it needed a new station house to take the place of the one at 17-19 Leonard Street, and it bought lots at Varick Street and Ericsson Place. Handsome rowhouses overlooking St. John's Park had originally occupied the land. Three plans from the 1870s and 1880s to put multiple dwellings on the corner were never carried out, so the lots were open for the city to acquire.

   Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

2. 1912

   Hoppin & Koen design a palazzo-style station house with a stable and motor garage

   Hoppin & Koen, who had designed Police Headquarters at 240 Centre Street, gave the Fourth Precinct station house a neo-Renaissance palazzo form in buff cast stone. It has a 108-foot front on Ericsson Place and a 100-foot front on Varick Street, where a two-story stable wing sits at the south end. The Varick Street entrance was originally for motor vehicles going to an internal garage. Three of the four original cast-iron lanterns were still beside the Ericsson Place doors when the Commission surveyed it.

   Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

3. 1922

   One block of Beach Street is renamed Ericsson Place for the Monitor's designer John Ericsson

   In 1922 the single block of Beach Street running between Hudson Street and Varick Street was renamed for the engineer John Ericsson, designer of the screw propeller and the ironclad Monitor. Ericsson owned and lived at 36 Beach Street from 1864 to 1889, and he drew up ship and heavy ordnance designs in his home office there. The renaming came in the sixtieth year since the Monitor's 1862 battle with the Merrimac, soon after a bronze tablet went up at the site of his house.

   Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

4. 2011

   Troop A's police horses leave the Varick Street stable for a World Trade Center command post

   The NYPD mounted unit known as Troop A had kept its horses in the stable on the Varick Street side of the station house for 99 years. In 2011 the stable was converted into a World Trade Center command post, supposedly for 18 months. In February 2014 a deputy inspector told Community Board 1 the command center would stay for the foreseeable future, although the police commissioner had promised the horses would eventually return.

   Source: tribecatrib.com

Further reading

• The 1912 First Precinct Station House - 16 Ericsson PlaceDaytonian in Manhattan

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