Shot Here · STOP 01 · West End
The Departed's police headquarters was built for the state's employment office.
The Departed's State Police headquarters was never a police building. The concrete block on Staniford Street that plays it was built for the state's Division of Employment Security, drawn by Paul Rudolph as one big plan in 1962 and never finished. Inside the empty half, two walls of two-story frescoes wait in the lobby. The state is weighing offers to redevelop it. Go while it still looks like the movie.
This is stop 1 of Shot Here. Walk it free in the app.
The plate
Collected on site
25 Staniford Street (the Government Service Center block between Cambridge, Staniford and Merrimac Streets)
Directions
Rudolph's plan had a tower too. The preservation report gives it as 23, 24 or 28 stories in different places, and it was never built. The Brooke Courthouse covers part of the planned complex.
More footnotes on the story card, in the app.
Near Bowdoin · Near Government Center · Near Haymarket · Near North Station · Near Charles/MGH · Near State
Sources (7)
- The big Boston movie tour: Here's where 6 of your favorite Boston flicks were filmedBoston.com · 2025-06-09
- America's birthplace on the silver screen: movies made in BostonEmily Beatty, The Suffolk Journal (Suffolk University student newspaper) · 2022-02-22
- Lindemann-Hurley Preservation Report (redacted)Bruner/Cott & Associates (Henry Moss, Lawrence Cheng) for DCAMM · 2020-01
- Lindemann-Hurley RedevelopmentMassachusetts Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance (DCAMM), mass.gov · accessed 2026-10-11
- The Departed, By the NumbersMatt Juul, Boston Magazine · 2016-10-02
- Reel BostonTy Burr, The Boston Globe · 2005-02-27
- Boston's brutalist government bunker faces condo crusadeHoodline · 2026-06-10