Sunset Park’s 68th Precinct
In 1892, architect Emile Gruwe designed and built Sunset Park’s 68th Precinct as two adjacent buildings. It was an homage to Byzantine and Romanesque Revival style. It had a stable for the police’s horses, three stories, a tower with intricate carvings, and a brick passage. Gruwe wanted the precinct to look so intimidating that “a man about to commit a crime would stand appalled at the sight of a station house such as this.” The building was definitely intimidating, but as the decades passed, it began to fall apart. Over a hundred and forty years after the creation of the precinct, it has become a home for “crime, graffiti, and vandalism.” Much must be done to preserve the building and to repurpose it. As Nikhita Venugopal writes, “Both buildings on the site are vacant and require a complete gut renovation. The two-story building is 5,952 square feet and the three-story building is 14,040 square feet. In addition, there are 14,567 square feet of available air rights, ‘some of which may be utilized on the property,’ the listing said.”
The police who worked in the 68th precinct left it in 1970, and no one has inhabited or taken care of the building since. In 1983, New York City designated it as a historic landmark, but that did not help keep the building alive. Today, graffiti covers the building, and inside is much worse. All three stories collapsed. To get to the back of the building from the front entrance, you would have to walk across a ten-foot drop on beams. To get to the roof (which is visible from the main floor), you would have to risk your life by scaling the building’s walls and windows. Fires and general neglect has caused the 68th precinct to sink so low for decades.
In 1999, the Brooklyn Chinese-American Association bought the 68th precinct property to restore it into a community center. The Association offers social services from youths to adults. Despite the big dreams, the plans fell through. In 2011, the Landmarks Preservation Commission gave the Association a violation for failing to maintain the building. The 68th precinct then went back on the market for five million dollars.
Things began to look up in 2016. Yosef Streicher bought the property from the Association. Later, he sold it to the School Construction Authority. The building is now being reconstructed into a new school: P.S. 557. As Ted General writes, “The school will serve 332 students from pre-kindergarten to fifth grade. It will include a gymnasium, rooftop playground, music and reading resource rooms, and a combined cafeteria and auditorium.” Construction began in 2018 and, today, much of the original precinct building has been taken down. From the outside perspective, it is hard to tell the precinct was ever there at all. The construction of P.S. 557 is being welcomed by the community.
Sources on Sunset Park’s 68th Precinct are, at times, conflicting. Some do not agree on who originally built the building or when.
Sources