Photographs from the fall of 1996.

The Page Avenue Police Station
It looked abysmal when I first saw it -- the eaves were rotting; the once-proud cupola had collapsed into a mass of twisted metal, taking a good portion of the roof with it. Vegetation had made its way up the facade; only scanty remains of paint clung to the surviving, battered woodwork.

And still, my jaw nearly dropped when I first saw the old beauty. Rotting or no, the Page Avenue Police Station was still grand enough to be a true eye-catcher...

Built in 1908, the building served the Twelth District, then one of the city's most affluent. Citizens of the neighborhood demanded that police presence in their neighborhood be dignified and graceful; the end result was the city's only Colonial Revival police station. It was rumored to be modelled on Philadelphia's Independence Hall, though there was little actual resemblance.

The building featured 16 inch-thick walls, a large gymnasium on the third floor, and a mounted patrol stable that for a time housed the city's only electric Studebaker patrol car, when the neighborhood demanded that the smelly horses be removed.