Toronto Police Headquarters

Toronto Police Headquarters

The main entrance on College Street

Toronto Police Headquarters is the headquarters of the Toronto Police Service, located at 40 College Street in Toronto, Ontario.

Architecture

Completed in 1988, the twelve storey building is in a Postmodern style. It was built to replace the older and smaller office on Jarvis Street. It is on the former site of the downtown Toronto YMCA building at Bay Street and Grenville.

The building is composed of a series of glass block and pink granite cubes which step back as they rise along College and Grenville Streets. An octagonal twelve storey tower meets the southeast corner of Bay and Grenville Streets. Natural light pours into the central area of the building through a ten-storey high atrium. A domed roof crowns the elevator lobby atop the terraced structure.

Street officer nicknames for the structure can vary, depending on the individual officer's opinion of headquarters as an institution: "the Pink Palace" and "the Pink Whorehouse" are two examples.