Famous people's places / Detroit – Greektown
Detroit Police Headquarters (1300 Beaubien)
Closed – archive entry · 2013
The Albert Kahn-designed downtown building that served as Detroit police headquarters from 1923 to 2013, now vacant and awaiting redevelopment.
01 / The story of this place
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Detroit's police department moved into this Albert Kahn-designed building at 1300 Beaubien Street, on the edge of Greektown, when it opened in 1923. For ninety years it was the nerve center of the department, and from 1942 to 1974 it was where longtime commissioner John Nichols ran the force through some of the city's most turbulent decades, including the 1967 uprising. The police department relocated to a new headquarters elsewhere downtown in 2013, leaving the roughly 240,000-square-foot building vacant. In 2018, developer Dan Gilbert's company Bedrock announced plans to acquire and redevelop the historic structure in partnership with Pike Pointe Holdings, promising to preserve its historic character, but as of the mid-2020s the project remains stalled with no finalized plans or timeline.
- Opened 1923; designed by architect Albert Kahn
- Served as Detroit police headquarters for 90 years, from 1923 to 2013
- Commissioner John Nichols ran the department from here from 1942 to 1974
- Vacant since 2013
- Bedrock announced redevelopment plans in 2018, still unfinished
Famous Detroiters
Famous people tied to this place 1
Lexicon entries for the people who lived, worked, performed or liked to spend time here.
- John Nichols 1918–1998 · police commissioner, sheriff
Worked here
The department's longtime headquarters, from which Nichols ran the force as commissioner; the police moved out in 2013.
Sources & fact check · Checked: 2026-09-25
An independently written bilingual guide. This collection is not an attendance-based ranking.
03 / Events
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