“Scotland Yard” has been synonymous with the Metropolitan Police Service almost since the force was founded in 1829. Its original headquarters had a public entrance in a narrow street in Whitehall known as Great Scotland Yard, because the buildings in the area were once set aside for the use of visiting Scottish kings. When the force outgrew those digs and moved a few blocks away, the name moved with it, though the street itself stayed put.

Innumerable crime thrillers, movies, and radio and television programs have modeled characters after Scotland Yard detectives, from Inspector Lestrade of the Sherlock Holmes stories to the 1950s BBC series “Fabian of the Yard” and even the Monty Python sendup “Inspector Flying Fox of the Yard.” And hundreds of television reporters have done their stand-ups in front of the famous rotating “New Scotland Yard” sign. That icon, known as the “special triangle jobby,” will go with the police when they move out.

The Metropolitan Police’s Crime Museum, which maintains files on Jack the Ripper and catalogs grisly artifacts, including the pots used by a London serial killer to boil his victims, will also move to the new site, a police spokesman said. To date, the museum has been accessible only to employees, but Mayor Johnson said he was considering opening it to the public.

A 1964 article in The New York Times described the last shift of address by the police force as a move from “grimy, fortresslike Victorian structures” to a “20-story, $42 million building to be erected about three blocks from Westminster Abbey.”

“Just as Wall Street stamped its name on the financial world of New York,” the article noted, “so Scotland Yard stamped its name on police activity in London.”