By Mike Simmons

On the front page of the Pensacola Journal, Tuesday, October 18, 1906, was an article about the new Pensacola Police Headquarters building. For the first time, a building was to be constructed for the purpose of housing the Pensacola Police. The new building was to be constructed at 407 S. Jefferson Street, the 2024 site of the Pensacola Museum of Art. At the time, the Pensacola Police Department was operating in a small building in the middle of the block. The new building’s footprint would incorporate the real estate from the present small building south to Main Street.

The plans called for a two-story building, “not of the ornamental kind,” but “modern in every respect…” The cost of the project was estimated at $18,000. The first floor would include a hospital ward for emergency cases, offices for the marshal, recorder, surgeon, and turnkey, two hospital rooms, jail cells for female inmates, a kitchen, and a dining room. The second floor will include the courtroom, jail cells for male inmates, two witness rooms, a room for patrolmen which would include lockers for their equipment, and space for reading.

The exigency for the contract to be awarded and the building to be completed was due to the small building they were currently occupying.

The wait lasted more than three years. Finally, members of the Pensacola Police Department proudly stood outside their new building and posed for a photo that was printed in the Pensacola News Journal on January 2, 1910. It would be their home until they moved into 40 S. Alcaniz Street in 1956.