Metropolitan Police Capitol Hill Station House, around 1894
Police Station House (Metropolitan Police Station), Precinct 8 (110)
500 E Street, SE
Constructed 1863, demolished and replaced with a new building, early 1900s
In 1863, the City of Washington commissioned Cluss and Kammerhueber to design and build the first purpose-built police station for Washington at 5th and E Streets SE. They also designed a "prison house" containing six cells at the rear of the station house. A report two years later described it as "an excellent station-house, with all the appliances for heating, lighting, ventilation, and dormitories for the men, such as are provided in station-houses of the most approved designs."
The report praised two precinct station-houses, the 8th and 4th. Cluss may have designed the 4th precinct station too. "Probably no city in the country has better arranged buildings for police purposes." The report compared those two buildings to all other Washington police station houses, described as "unsafe, inconvenient, discreditable, and unavoidably filthy, loathsome, and pestiferous."
Later the building was designated Precinct 5. Today, the Metropolitan Police station is still located at the same adress, but the Cluss building has been replaced by another building.
This picture of the Metropolitan Police Capitol Hill station house comes from an 1894 history of the police department (Richard Sylvester: District of Columbia police: a retrospect of the police organizations of the cities of Washington and Georgetown and the District of Columbia, with biographical sketches, illustrations and historic cases: published for the benefit of the Policemen's Fund, Washington, D.C. 1894).