On December 8, 1882, the three Cleveland Police Commissioners inspected the city’s newest station house, serving the Tenth Precinct, located at 38 Swiss Street. Completed at a cost of $6,095.84, the station housed the officers of the Tenth Precinct, who patrolled an area “from Harbor street and Franklin Avenue, along which to the city limits, along the limits to Burton Street, to Randall, to Harbor, to Franklin Avenue.” By 1886, nearly 20,000 people lived within the precinct boundaries.
The Tenth Precinct station house remained in use by the police until the 1930s, when a department wide reorganization consolidated the force. In 1936, Chief Matowitz submitted recommendations to Safety Director Eliot Ness that included combining the Eighth and Tenth Precincts. The following year, the Tenth Precinct was eliminated. The “vehicles and man power of the Tenth would be divided between the two precincts [8th and 12th], with the new radio cruiser operating in the territory now covered by the three precincts.”
In 1939, the Tenth Precinct Station house was one of six vacant precinct stations converted into a Boys Town Recreation center by Safety Director Eliot Ness. Organized to combat juvenile delinquency, Boys Towns provided a variety of services and support centered on crime prevention to boys aged 8-18. The station house was later abandoned and eventually torn down in 1952.
