Russell Street Police Headquarters in Melbourne, Australia was for many years the headquarters of the Victoria Police before they were moved to William Street in about 1990. The main multi-storey brick building located on the west of the site was constructed 1940-1943 in the Art Deco style by architect Percy Edgar Everett and is reminiscent of the design of the Empire State Building. The complex also included buildings along Mackenzie Street constructed in the 1880s and modified in the 1920s, as well as a 1970s brown brick building on the east of the site, which has since been demolished.
It was used in the opening titles of the television series Homicide, a fictional police drama series dealing with the homicide squad of the Victoria police force.
The complex is located on the north-eastern corner of Russell and La Trobe streets, and extends along Russell Street to the intersection of Mackenzie Street, Melbourne. Across the road on Russell Street is the Old Melbourne Gaol, old City Police Station and City Courts buildings (both now occupied by the RMIT University). The Police Headquarters was the site of the Russell Street Bombing in 1986.
Following vacation of the buildings by the Victoria Police in 1995, the site was involved in several failed redevelopment proposals including conversion to student accommodation and to a hotel. In 2005, the eastern wing of the complex, a 1970s building and part of the 1940s southern wing including a theaterette, were demolished to make way for a new apartment building, and the remainder of the complex was being converted into apartments. The apartment complex is now known as "Concept Blue".
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Russell St Police Headquarters
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The control room for Air Raid Precautions services during World War II were located at the Russell Street police headquarters
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Control room during World War II.
Famous quotes containing the words russell, street, police and/or headquarters:
“The snow had begun in the gloaming,
And busily all the night
Had been heaping field and highway
With a silence deep and white.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
“Italy is such a delightful place to live in if you happen to be a man. There one may enjoy that exquisite luxury of Socialism—that true Socialism which is based not on equality of income or character, but on the equality of manners. In the democracy of the caffè or the street the great question of our life has been solved, and the brotherhood of man is a reality. But it is accomplished at the expense of the sisterhood of women.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“Despite the hundreds of attempts, police terror and the concentration camps have proved to be more or less impossible subjects for the artist; since what happened to them was beyond the imagination, it was therefore also beyond art and all those human values on which art is traditionally based.”
—A. Alvarez (b. 1929)
“Anything goes in Wichita. Leave your revolvers at police headquarters and get a check.”
—For the State of Kansas, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)