4. 22nd Police Precinct, Former Horse Stables
The 22nd Precinct of the NYPD, the oldest precinct in the city, operates out of horse stables designed by Mould and constructed in 1871. Located at the 86th Street transverse in Central Park, the low brick and brownstone structure once housed up to thirty horses used for work around the park. The stables were connected to two other buildings, an open shed and a small supervisor’s cottage. The shed backed up against the former Central Park reservoir, which you can still see remnants of inside the station. Calvert Vaux is widely and mistakenly credited with the building’s design.
In 1936, Robert Moses had the cottage torn down, and he moved the Central Park police from the Arsenal into the stable house. Over the years, the building was not well cared for. There was some restoration work done in the 1990s, but in 2001 the police moved out. The force moved back into the stable house in 2011 after a $61.7 million renovation project, which included installing a partially bullet-proof glass atrium, central air-conditioning, 2,300-square feet of additional space, and more upgrades.
