A. The Police Station, at the Bon Temps Town Hall.

Q. Where is it supposed to be on the show?

A. In Bon Temps, Louisiana.

Q. When did we see it on the show?

A. We see the exterior for the first time in Episode 4 of Season One ("Escape From Dragon House"), when Jason Stackhouse gets arrested on suspicion of murdering Dawn (at her house), and is taken to the police station.

Tara, who has a crush on Jason, arrives to get him out of jail. In the scene, we see her walk into the Town Hall, and then see the lobby, where Tara talks the Sheriff into letting Jason go.

It was also glimpsed in Episode 11 of Season One ("To Love is to Bury"), when Maryann bails Tara out of jail (after running her off the road to begin with). We see the building as they exit the police station, and then poor Jason is led in (in handcuffs) again for another murder he didn't commit.


We see the same building again in Episode 10 of Season Two ("New World in My View"), when Maryann
arrives (again) to break out all of the Bon Temps citizens who were tossed in jail after falling under her spell and misbehaving.

And we see it once again in Episode 11 of Season Two (“Frenzy"), after the town of  Bon Temps has gone completely crazy under the spell of Maryann.

In this scene, we see Jason & Detective Andy arrive in their car in front of the Town Hall, where they see a chubby housewife in her bra & panties running across the Town Hall lawn, out-of-control, trailing a roll of toilet paper behind her.

They then go inside the building, where Jason deals with a possessed, sex-obsessed receptionist, while Andy gathers guns for a misguided attempt to take back their town from the dark forces that are driving it mad.


It's seen again in Season 3, Episode 4 ("9 Crimes"), when Jason blackmails acting-Sheriff Andy into to letting him work at the police station.


And it pops up once again in the show's final Season 7 (in Episode 2, "I Found You"), when a vigilante mob of surviving
Bon Temps citizens storm the station to steal police weapons (to use against maurauding hordes of Hep-vampires).

Q. What is it actually, in real life?

A. A city jail.

Q. Where can I find it in real life?

A. The Bon Temps police station is actually the Hawthorne Jail, run by the Hawthorne Police Department.

You'll find it at 4440 W. 126th Street, in Hawthorne, California.

That's at the southeast corner of 126th Street & Grevillea Ave. (The major intersection Hawthorne Blvd & El Segundo Blvd is a block to the southeast.)




I shot the photos below in 2009

You might notice that the old fashioned black lampposts,
seen in the screencaps, aren't there.  They were props.



The photo above is looking south, and the photo below is looking southeast (from the corner of 126th & Grevillea).







The jail is just a few blocks from another "True Blood" location: Big Patty's House of Pies.  




  Here is an aerial photo of the jail . And here is a map link.


That aqua blue water tower, seen in the background as Jason & Andy arrive at Town Hall, is located just two blocks due west of the Hawthorne jail, on the east side of Truro Avenue, north of El Segundo Blvd. Here is an aerial photo of the tower.

Warning: The city of Hawthorne isn't usually an unsafe place, but parts of it can get a little edgy at times,
so if you visit, exercise reasonable caution.



Update: A fan, Pat Duff, emailed me to say that she had visited this location in February 2011, and noticed that lettering on the glass front doors read “SHERIFF” and “CITY OF BON TEMPS”.   She noted that "the building did not appear to be in current use by Hawthorne at all, and seemed to be vacant."  She sent me several photos.  Here's one of them:









She also pointed out that the same building had been used in the TV series "The Event", in an episode titled "Casulties of War", where it was the Snyder, Texas Police Department - from which Sean rescued Leila.  The Snyder Police shield decals are still on the back doors.  (Thanks, Pat!)


It also appeared as a police station in the 2009 movie "Post Grad", with Alexis Bledel.

Q. How the heck did you figure out where it was?

A. Since the scene with Jason & Andy takes place during the insane orgies caused by Maryann, which I knew that had filmed in Louisiana, my first assumption was that the Town Hall was probably somewhere in that state.

But when I took a closer look at the surrounding neighborhood, I realized that it looked more like a Southern California location. So I started looking for the building.

I had two main clues to go on. When Tara enters the lobby, if you look carefully you can see the number 4440 on the glass windows above the door. It didn't seem like something they'd want to fake, so I assumed it was a real address.

Since they had shot a scene in Long Beach for that same episode (at the Fangtasia bar), I started by checking out every obvious 4440 address in that city. But I couldn't find a match there.

Then I noticed that round, aqua blue water tower seen in the background (as Jason & Andy's car rounds the corner).  That water tower looked familiar. I thought I had seen it before. So I did some googling for local water tower photos, and sure enough, it turned out to be the Hawthorne Water Tower.

After that, it was just a matter of locating the water tower on a map, then using aerial photos to look at every 4440 address nearby. I quickly spotted the green lawn in front of the Bon Temps Town Hall, at the southeast corner of 126th & Grevillea.

( What really surprised me was to see that it was just a couple of blocks away from Big Patty's House of Pies. I had just photographed that diner a few days before, and if I had known about the police station at the time, I could have saved myself an extra trip. )

The next day, I drove down to Hawthorne and shot the photos you see above.