The paint is barely dry on its final, tidy touches, but the transformation of the former Acme Paint and Glass building to new headquarters for the Burlington Police Department is complete. It’s too soon to judge the impact of the building — or its occupants — on its surrounding community, or to evaluate the extent to which the move will actually improve the efficiency of the police. But architecturally speaking, the irony of the department’s move to the mouth of North Avenue seems to have been lost on the general public, and perhaps on the main actors themselves — architects, commissioners, city councilors and police personnel.

The department had fought tooth and nail to move out of — rather than restore and remodel — their South Winooski Avenue complex of two joined buildings, one dating from the turn of the century and the other a more recent addition. Consultants demonstrated to nearly everyone’s satisfaction that only a new building, constructed to modern, contemporary standards, could appropriately house a modern, contemporary police force. The irony is this: The police are moving into a restored and remodeled complex of two joined buildings, one dating from the turn of the century and the other a more recent addition.

What special problems was architect Graham Goldsmith trying to grapple with in the police headquarters project? The difficulties of the narrow site, bounded by Battery Park to the south, a barren parking lot to the north, a precipitous drop to the west and the pedestrian and vehicular traffic of North Avenue hard on its eastern edge? The limitations of size, shape, modest materials, plain design and co-existence of neighboring rectangular, one-story buildings? Certainly. But in addition he must have attempted to find a symbolic representation for the conflict between authority and freedom which is at the core of this building.

The apparent confusion of Goldsmith’s design solutions is testimony to this. But has he succeeded? The modifications to the exterior of the new headquarters building are so artlessly tentative, arbitrary and contradictory as to pose a number of questions to all who care about Burlington’s physical fabric.

First, there is the relentless ambiguity: Is this one building or two buildings? Every gesture in favor of wholeness seems to be systematically countered by its opposite. On one hand, the repetitive, unifying use of a stucco-like material on the fake cornices and the infill concrete blocks below the new windows. On the other, twin entrances at either end of the North Avenue facade. In a crisis, would we want to stop and figure out which is which? Another ambiguity is the differentiation in material finish — brick and stucco — from one half of the building to the other. Finally, there is the casual (unsafe?) quality of access for pedestrians and vehicles near a park environment heavily frequented by families and children.

Individual elements of the new police building are also puzzling: The additions to this plain, utilitarian building appear to be of poorer materials than the original. The concrete on brick walls; the “Miami Vice” cornices, which are unnecessary when not serving as entrance canopies and insufficient when they do. The un-therapeutic choices of muddy colors and abrasive surfaces. The ambience created by an even heavier concentration of 19th-century electrical poles, wires and appliances along North Avenue. Are these gestures of respect or contempt, love or satire, thrift or neglect?

And what about those chubby columns — especially the strange, redundant trio which supports the apex of the southeast canopy? Is this a subtle, aero-modernist homage to the Citgo station at the corner of Alfred Street and Shelburne Road?

In his wonderful book, Adam’s House in Paradise, Joseph Ryckwert discusses the extent to which the classical architectural orders of antiquity — Doric, Ionic and Corinthian — represented for medieval scholars not only order as style but order as divine authority. We talk about an orderly process and about law-and-order and accept it in the context of a democratic society. But we also use the word “order” to indicate authority and compulsion. Goldsmith’s peculiarly proportioned columns and their faceted, neo-Egyptian bases allude to a brutal, hierarchical, totalitarian civilization. It casts a threatening cloud over the gentle, domestic landscape of Battery Park — as if we need to be reminded that law and order still have their roots in authority and obedience.

This article appears in October 11 • 1995.