52nd Police Precinct Station House

3016 Webster Avenue | Norwood | built 1906

Open on the map6 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. 1904

    The city starts a station house for the fast-growing Norwood and Bedford Park sections

    Norwood and Bedford Park belonged to Westchester County until New York City annexed them in 1874, and in 1898 the Bronx joined consolidated New York as a borough. As the population climbed toward a peak around 1905, the need for more police grew urgent. The city answered with this station house, built from 1904 to 1906 for what was then called the 41st Precinct.

    “The ensuing rapid growth in population which reached a peak around 1905, created an urgent need for expanded police protection.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  2. 1906

    Stoughton & Stoughton finish a red brick precinct house with a clock tower like a Tuscan villa's

    Stoughton & Stoughton, also known for the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument on Riverside Drive, chose romantic neo-Italian Renaissance forms for this semi-rural site. The three-story red brick building, about 50 by 80 feet, is centered on a 21-foot-square clock tower whose three free sides carry large polychrome terra-cotta clock faces. Cobalt-blue tiles fill the spandrels around the round-arched ground-floor windows.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  3. 1906

    Patrol wagons unload prisoners beneath the clock tower, with the horses stabled out back

    Besides its main entrance on Webster Avenue, the station house was given a second door inside a porte-cochere under the clock tower, where patrol wagons let off prisoners. Behind the building stood a stable with a garage space for the patrol wagon and a room of stalls for horses. Even this utilitarian outbuilding got the same bandcourse and diaper-patterned brick on its upper floor.

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

  4. 1921

    The Police Department values the station house at $125,000

    In 1921 the New York Police Department estimated the building's value at $125,000 and put the 90-by-170-foot lot at $15,000. Adjusted for inflation, those sums equal roughly $1.7 million and $210,000 in 2024 dollars.

    Source: Wikipedia

  5. 1929

    The 41st Precinct station becomes the 52nd in a citywide renumbering

    Built from 1904 to 1906, the station house first belonged to the 41st Precinct. In the 1929 renumbering of police precincts across the whole city, it was redesignated the 52nd, the number in its name today.

    Source: Wikipedia

  6. 1974

    June 18

    The Landmarks Preservation Commission designates the precinct house a city landmark

    At a public hearing on July 24, 1973, eleven witnesses spoke for designation and nobody spoke against it. Designating the building on June 18, 1974, the commission pointed to its picturesque silhouette, its well-preserved original ornament, its fit with the surrounding parks and parkways, and the fact that it was still serving the Police Department.

    “Eleven witnesses spoke in favor of designation. There were no speakers in opposition to designation.”

    Source: NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission

Further reading

Nearby

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