The producers however always maintained it was not meant to be anywhere other than a big city, where you had good, bad and indifferent weather. It was intimated that it was probably in the East and that it had large areas of urban decay. The name itself was taken from a tough area in Pittsburgh called 'The Hill', close to where Bochco had gone to college.
 

Note in the above screen shoot taken from the series, the Morgan sign has been moved around and now points East down Maxwell. It has been replaced with a fictitious Hill Street sign, which is in fact pointing South (as can be guessed by the strong shadow).

As well as those famous views of the building, much of the opening or 'establishing' shots (especially those trademark aerial shots of moving railway stock), were filmed in and around Chicago. However, most of the studio and outdoor acting scenes, were filmed in Los Angeles California.

Sadly research by the webmaster has been unable to locate any of the props used by the various studios where filming took place over the years, some of which no longer exist themselves. A few outside locations have been identified in LA, but they no longer exist either.  
 

Picture courtesy of the Chicago Public Library

A brief history of the Building:

The Maxwell Street Precinct Station House has stood on this spot since at least 1889. For many years it was one of Chicago busiest police stations and had an illustrious career until its closure in December 1997. At that time, the building housed the Vice Control Section and the Organised Crime division.

By the turn of the century (1900) the area around the station had become one of the most heavily populated, and dangerous precinct in Chicago. It is said there were some 125,000 people in just two square miles, speaking a large number of different languages. The above picture show the Precinct House, as it was around that time.

The immediate area soon attracted the name “Bloody Maxwell” due the number of homicides and the activates of 'organised crime', preying on the many resident immigrants. During the twenties the area became the centre, for the production and distribution of bootleg alcohol, for the infamous 'Genna' family.

It has been published elsewhere that it is possible that something like half of Maxwell's police officers were on the bootleggers payroll 1920, receiving around $15 a week. Lieutenants and captains from neighbouring districts receiving at least $500 a week. Eventually the bootleg operation failed, due in the main to most of the Genna family being murdered by other gangsters.

After the repeal of prohibition in 1933, the area became a little more 'law abiding', but by the fifties people had already begun to leave this declining neighbourhood. In the early sixties large areas were cleared, to make way for the University of Illinois campus. In 1961 the police services was reduced from 38 to 21 districts. The station survived these cuts, to become one of just a few 19th Century precinct houses, to still be active into the late twentieth century.   

Much has been written about the area and many local people are bitter that so much of it has now been lost. Often referred to as the place that the Chicago Blues was born (and from that Rock and Roll it is suggested), there can be little doubt that the are around Maxwell Street was very special. Much debate and many ideas later, it has mostly been destroyed and lost for ever.

However Maxwell Street Precinct Station House will now live on and is now the home of a new type of police officer - The officers of the University of Illinois Campus Police