Robert Geddes, an architect who designed the Philadelphia Police Department headquarters, died on February 13 at 99, writes Fred A. Bernstein for The New York Times.

The transformative first dean of Princeton’s School of Architecture designed the Philadelphia building, which opened in 1962, with a curved exterior, with the aim to signal a softer police presence in the city.

However, “The Roundhouse” instead became “a physical manifestation of a persistent, systemic and brutal history of policing,” especially during Frank Rizzo’s time as the city’s police chief and later mayor, wrote the preservationist Jack Pyburn in 2021.

When the police department considered moving to another location in 2010, many residents expressed their hopes that the building would be demolished.

But Pyburn and others argued that the building should be preserved exactly due to its checkered past, as a sort of monument to the victims of police misconduct.

The police finally moved out of the building in 2022, and a spokesman said that the city was considering whether to sell it or not.

Read more about Robert Geddes and “The Roundhouse” in The New York Times.

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Wanda Kaluza shares her take on the exterior of the landmark Philadelphia Police Headquarters building known as “The Roundhouse”, one of the most stylish police administration buildings in the United States.