298 Mulberry Street

NoHo | built 1986

Open on the map4 entries

The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

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

  1. 1862

    New York's police headquarters opens at 300 Mulberry Street, near the densest tenements

    The headquarters on Mulberry Street served as the center of the city's law enforcement from 1862 to 1909. It stood near the densest concentration of tenements and eight blocks down Mulberry from the heart of Five Points. Inside was the Rogue's Gallery, which gathered photographs of the most notorious criminals in the city. This was an earlier building on the site, which is now covered by an apartment complex and a parking garage.

    Source: The Bowery Boys

  2. 1863

    Draft rioters beat Police Superintendent John A. Kennedy and leave him at headquarters

    Only a year after the headquarters opened, the Civil War draft riots of summer 1863 reached it. Superintendent John A. Kennedy was savagely beaten and brought to the building nearly dead. Rioters also targeted telegraph poles across the city, which left officers without a way to communicate.

    Source: The Bowery Boys

  3. 1895

    Theodore Roosevelt works from a Mulberry Street office to clean up a corrupt police force

    Through the 1870s and 1880s the department was mired in corruption, and mayors who campaigned on police reform generally gave way to its entrenched bribery and kickbacks. The state-run Lexow Committee investigated in the 1890s, and in 1895 reform commissioner Theodore Roosevelt took charge, working from an office in this building. A 1901 issue of the Evening World still called the address a center of laziness and corruption.

    Source: The Bowery Boys

  4. 1909

    The police leave Mulberry Street for a Beaux-Arts palace and the old headquarters is demolished

    In 1909, after considering a move to Times Square, the police department relocated to a Beaux-Arts building at Broome and Centre streets, 240 Centre Street. It cited the needs of a consolidated five-borough city, and the move also helped it shed the Mulberry Street building's reputation for corruption. The old headquarters was torn down and, as of the Bowery Boys' 2011 article, has no plaque. The Times called it famous worldwide in 1909.

    Source: The Bowery Boys

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