Check out my new article in the August 7, 2025 issue of the Seacoast Scene, which is about the history of the Salisbury Beach Police Station. This old police station has just been sold with plans to demolish it and turn it into a condotel.
I heard about the sale of the building from a press release, but everything I read about it indicated that the building was going to remain and be remodeled into the new condotel.
It wasn’t until I talked to the town manager that I discovered that the building, much like Foote’s Ice Cream stand, is going to be demolished and a new structure built in its place.
Once again, I understand the need for more housing but it is a shame to see a historic building being torn down instead of being reused.
Built in 1930, the Salisbury Police Station is a classic Colonial Revival-style municipal building designed by notable architect Penn Varney. It really is an old-school police station, and you can’t find many buildings like that anymore.
Varney designed many municipal buildings in Massachusetts, and he actually has five buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It’s too bad the Salisbury Police Station isn’t one of them because then maybe they would have considered not demolishing it.
Since it was a large brick building and the police headquarters, the building served as a temporary shelter during the many storms, blizzards, and hurricanes that hit New England over the years. I found something poetic about the fact that although the building will be torn down, the site will still serve as a place of shelter one way or another.
I’m not sure when exactly it will be demolished, but the construction company has three years to build the new condotel, so I guess it could be torn down at any time. I’ll have to make my way down to Salisbury Beach again this summer or fall to get some photos and a video of the place before it’s gone forever.
In researching the story, I actually found out a number of surprising things about the Salisbury police force that I plan on writing some blog posts about for my Salisbury Beach website.
For instance, in 1925 the department was accused of smuggling and selling liquor in the police station during prohibition, in what came to be known as the “Salisbury Beach rum-running case.” The police chief at the time actually lost his job and was sent to jail as a result.
Then, in 1930, Salisbury police officers were ordered by the town selectman to be nicer to people after they received too many complaints that the officers “talked roughly to the patrons of the beach, often employing swear words and giving the visitors a bad impression of the beach.”
It sounds like the police department used to be quite a handful back in the day. The officers on the force seem quite nice now, and I have fond memories of many of the police officers, such as Officer Foote, interacting with us kids during Beach Day at Salisbury Beach in the 1980s.
The police force would always give our convoy of buses a police escort down to the beach that day and would then hang around and keep an eye on us as we ran around the amusement parks and the beach all day.
Below is a list of sources that I used to research the article about the police station. If you have any questions about the story or about the history of the building, leave a comment below.
Sources:
Sargent, Carolyn. Salisbury History. Salisbury Historical Commission, 1991.
“Propose New Fire and Police Station for Salisbury Beach.” Newburyport Daily News, 6 Mar. 1929, p.8.
“New $35,000 Salisbury Beach Fire and Police Station is Completed.” Amesbury Daily News, 7 Feb. 1930, p. 4.
“New $35,000 Fire and Police Station at Salisbury Beach.” Newburyport Daily News, 13 Jan. 1930, p.8.