The former Illinois State Police Office in Pontiac, Illinois,

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served as the

Illinois State Police Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rockfor ...

District 6 headquarters from its construction in 1941 until 2003. The building, located along old

U.S. Route 66 U.S. Route 66 or U.S. Highway 66 (US 66 or Route 66) was one of the original highways in the United States Numbered Highway System. It was established on November 11, 1926, with road signs erected the following year. The h ...

, was listed on the U.S.

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 2007.

History

Building

The Illinois State Police Office south of Pontiac, Illinois along

was constructed in 1941 as the headquarters for the

District 6. The building was one of the first headquarters buildings to be built during the era. The new headquarters building was constructed and traffic along Route 66 continued to increase throughout the 1940s. In 1944 the route was widened to four lanes through this region of Illinois and two additional highway lanes were constructed directly in front of the building. When Interstate 55 was built about a half mile (800 m) to the west of the route during the 1970s traffic on 66 began to decrease. The Illinois State Police remained headquartered in the Pontiac U.S. Route 66 building until 2003. The building was vacated when a new facility was constructed in Pontiac, the old structure had become expensive to maintain and subject to repeated flooding issues.Governor Breaks Ground for New State Police Headquarters
, " ( Press Release), ''Office of the Governor of Illinois'', 7 August 2001. Retrieved 30 September 2007. The building is vacant as of 2003. After being listed on the U.S.

in March 2007,

preservationists Preservationist is generally understood to mean ''historic preservationist'': one who advocates to preserve architecturally or historically significant buildings, structures, objects, or sites from demolition or degradation. Historic preservation us ...

received word that a bill had passed the

Illinois House of Representatives The Illinois House of Representatives is the lower house of the Illinois General Assembly. The body was created by the first Illinois Constitution adopted in 1818. The House under the current constitution as amended in 1980 consists of 118 re ...

authorizing the state to pass ownership of the building to Livingston County. The bill was sponsored by a

state representative A state legislature is a legislative branch or body of a political subdivision in a federal system. Two federations literally use the term "state legislature": * The legislative branches of each of the fifty state governments of the United Sta ...

from nearby Chenoa, Dan Rutherford, who called the building "part of the heritage of Route 66." A similar bill passed the

Illinois Senate The Illinois Senate is the Upper house, upper chamber of the Illinois General Assembly, the legislative branch of the government of the U.S. state, State of Illinois in the United States. The body was created by the first state constitution adop ...

on August 23, 2007 and was enacted as law the same day.Public Act 095-0388

PDF
, 23 August 2007, ''Illinois General Assembly'', official website. Retrieved 30 September 2007.

District six

The 6th District of the Illinois State Police was originally established as District 9 and it was one of initial five police districts established when the State Police were officially founded in April 1922. Its original base of operations was in Kankakee, as was the headquarters for the entire State Police agency. The district covered

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Iroquois The Iroquois ( or ), officially the Haudenosaunee ( meaning "people of the longhouse"), are an Iroquoian-speaking confederacy of First Nations peoples in northeast North America/ Turtle Island. They were known during the colonial years to ...

, and

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Counties upon its inception. In 1935 the district renamed as District 6, and its coverage area was altered to just include the counties of Kankakee, Ford, Iroquois,

McLean MacLean, also spelt Maclean and McLean, is a Goidelic languages, Gaelic surname Mac Gille Eathain, or, Mac Giolla Eóin in Irish language, Irish Gaelic), Eóin being a Gaelic form of Johannes (John (given name), John). The clan surname is an A ...

and Livingston. It was at this time that the headquarters was moved into a rented building along U.S Route 66 near Pontiac. The official groundbreaking for the new headquarters took place in August 2001 and was attended by then-Illinois Governor George Ryan. The new headquarters building, a facility, was the result of successive requests from the Illinois State Police every year since 1979.

Architecture

The Pontiac State Police Office is cast in the Art Moderne style, reflecting the sleek, streamlined look of new automobiles during the era. The streamline effect is reflected through the structure's use of curved corners, smooth surfaces and structural glass bricks. The building's interior contains a large squad room, used for meetings, office space, a public lobby and a garage bay for cars and motorcycles.Thomason, Phillip and Douglass, Teresa.
Illinois State Police Office
" (

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

), National Register of Historic Places Nomination Form, 21 March 2006, HAARGIS Database, ''Illinois Historic Preservation Agency''. Retrieved 30 September 2007. The one-story building has two main wings. The north wing was originally the administrative area and the south wing a garage. The building's layout has been referred to as "pistol-shaped."Thomas, Blackwell.
State Police HQ preservation moves ahead
" ''The Pantagraph'' (

Bloomington, Illinois Bloomington is a city and the county seat of McLean County, Illinois, United States. It is adjacent to the town of Normal, and is the more populous of the two principal municipalities of the Bloomington–Normal metropolitan area. Bloomington ...

), 30 March 2007. Retrieved 30 September 2007. The same design was used by the Illinois State Police in the construction of the headquarters building at Rock Island.

References

External links

{{Commons category, Illinois State Police Office (Pontiac)
Illinois State Police District 6
official website Government buildings completed in 1941 Police headquarters National Register of Historic Places in Livingston County, Illinois Pontiac, Illinois Buildings and structures on U.S. Route 66 Streamline Moderne architecture in Illinois Buildings and structures in Livingston County, Illinois Government buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Illinois State law enforcement agencies of Illinois