68th Precinct Station House and Stable
4308 4th Avenue | also 4302 4th Avenue | Sunset Park | built 2024
Open on the map5 entries
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.
- 1885
Brooklyn's 18th Precinct leaves a makeshift tenement station for new quarters at Fourth Avenue and 43rd Street
The Eighth Sub-Precinct, covering roughly today's Sunset Park, became the 18th Precinct in 1885 under Captain James Kenney. Until then it had operated from a makeshift station inside a tenement building at Third Avenue and 36th Street. That year the precinct moved into its new station house at Fourth Avenue and 43rd Street.
- 1886
Emile Gruwe designs a Romanesque Revival station house and stable with a corner tower
The three-story brick station house, finished in 1886 to designs by Emile M. Gruwe, is dominated by a corner tower and a Norman-style entrance portico on Fourth Avenue whose corbel table carries whimsical figure heads. A one-story passage joins it to the stable. Gruwe also designed a nearly identical station house at 484 Liberty Avenue in East New York, which still stands in altered form.
“…the almost identical 75th Police Precinct Station House, still standing in somewhat altered form at 484 Liberty Avenue in the East New York section…”
- 1929
The precinct that works from this station becomes the 68th in 1929 after four earlier renumberings
When Brooklyn joined Greater New York in 1898, the 18th Precinct became the 43rd. It was renumbered the 143rd in 1915, the 76th three years later, the 32nd in 1924, and in 1929 it took the number 68, the one the landmark report uses for the building.
- 1970
The 68th Precinct leaves the station house and the building sits empty
The 68th Precinct worked from the station house until 1970, when a new station house opened in Sunset Park and the 68th merged with another precinct into a larger one. The old building then stood vacant from the mid-1970s.
“The 68th Police Precinct remained in the station house until 1970. At that time a new station house was opened in Sunset Park…”
- 1983
The Landmarks Commission designates the vacant station house and stable
The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the 68th Precinct Station House and Stable on April 12, 1983, after hearings in March and May 1980 at which six witnesses supported designation and one opposed it. The building, empty since the mid-1970s, had suffered a fire in 1980 that did some internal damage, though the report found it sound, and local groups were looking for a way to reuse it.
“A fire in 1980 did some internal damage, but the building remains sound. Local community groups are seeking a solution for the reuse of the building.”
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