A lone officer stands in the doorway of the police department around the year 1900 when it was located at 312-314 Walnut Street.
Two decades earlier, Evansville’s population was nearing 30,000 and climbing steadily. Until 1882, when the building pictured here opened, the city’s law enforcement officers occupied space in the nearby city hall.
The state legislature enacted a law in the following year that reorganized the police department and created a unified system; prior to that, the city marshal’s office had shared responsibilities with the police department, which employed forty officers in the 1880s. As the city continued to grow, this building was replaced in 1916 by a new one that functioned until the Civic Center opened in 1969.
