A battered and bedraggled payphone is not a pretty sight. Insult adds to the injury when the commercial face of a leading cell phone provider looms over the beaten-up phone. Arms crossed, a smug grin on the actor's face, his eyes seem to look sardonically at anyone who would contemplate using this payphone.

The position of this wireless provider's advertisement -- hovering over the remains of a payphone seemingly abandoned by its owner -- seems symbolic. Its placement here may be intentional or it may be coincidence, but it seems reasonable to expect that a wireless phone provider might market itself toward today's payphone customers. Anyone attempting to use this wasted payphone might feel doubly seduced by an adjacent advertisement for cell phone service.

The smashed receiver dangles about a foot above the sidewalk. Its wires and other innards exposed, the handset can only hang like this. If I had tried to put this phone back on the hook I would have failed, because half of the hook is gone.

The violated payphone is owned by the UDC Corporation. Appropriately enough the letters "UDC" stand for UnderDog Communications. Cursory web searches for The UnderDog Communications Corporation produce nothing of interest, though the payphone itself shows a Jackson Heights P.O. Box for the company's mailing address. With little else to go on besides the decrepit condition of this payphone which bears its brand I will assume that the UDC Corporation has left the payphone business, if not disappeared altogether, leaving this vandal's monument in its wake.

Last year at about this time I commented on a New York Times blog entry that called out a "Phantom Bell Atlantic Phone Booth" on the Brooklyn Heights esplanade.

I remembered this today when I spotted a payphone bearing vestiges of the Bell Atlantic brand -- a brand which should have disappeared by 2002:

I still spot public phones branded with names like AT&T, BellSouth, NYNEX, and lesser known companies which either exited the payphone business or disappeared altogether years ago. Here are a few vestiges of these brands which I spotted on NYC payphones just this week.

I stood perfectly upright when I took this picture. The payphone enclosure was italic, tilted, skewed, and visibly hung over. I guess this payphone had been hit by a vehicle, or maybe there had been a rare, isolated earthquake that affected only payphones here on Greenpoint Avenue in Sunnyside (the Funny Side), Queens. Whatever happened to it this bludgeoned payphone enclosure cut a distinctive profile.

I studied Latin in high school and read about the "Early Italic Tribes". My mother and I laughed, imagining that "Italic tribes" consisted of people who stood at an angle, in the way that italic typeface such as this is slightly slanted.

This italic payphone, perilous as it looked, had a functioning dial tone. It reminded me of the Crazy Payphone I spotted a few years ago, and the Toppled Payphone Enclosure on 5th Avenue.

Telebeam payphones are disappearing from the sidewalks of New York at a rapid clip. In recent days this Telebeam payphone in midtown went from off the hook to off the grid. I spotted this dangling payphone receiver a few months ago (and posted it to my New York City Payphones section), and this week saw that only the empty hull of this payphone enclosure remained. We can assume this payphone enclosure itself will soon be removed.





The removal of this payphone revealed a little more than usual, though, in the form of some previously concealed paperwork stuck behind the phone itself. This orange sheet bears logistical and contact information from Telebeam.

Dial tone service to this public pay telephone was ordered by submission of a public access line order form on 10/10/00 and a conduit in field form on 3/14/01. The underlying dial tone provider has not yet completed certain construction or engineering work necessary to provide dial tone service.

The notice is punctured by a metal screw, and was presumably rendered moot when the "underlying dial tone provider" got their act together.

I do not have many real contacts in the payphone business but I once met a couple of tech workers from Telebeam. This was 4 or 5 years ago, at which time the future of the payphone business still had some tantalizing rays of opportunity. Payphone locations, it was thought by those in the business, could be used as Wi-Fi relay points, police surveillance cameras, or for Internet access points. TCC Teleplex (not to be confused with Telebeam) continues to offer Internet-enabled payphones in Manhattan; and Verizon did, in fact, rig some of its payphone locations with Wi-Fi signal relays. The Wi-Fi initiative seems to have been scotched while the Teleplex payphone Internet kiosks seem to do well. The larger idea of utilizing existing payphone spots for other purposes seems to have faded. Advertising has settled in to place as a primary alternative use for surviving payphones, a practice which essentially subsidizes Verizon's payphone business in the city.

Speaking of "off the hook" I remember now what I long thought was the etymology that idiom. I am wrong about this but I like to believe it anyway as it makes sense to me. I thought the expression originated from this scenario: Two people are having a phone conversation when one of them says something outrageous, something so crazy that the other party throws the phone down and leaves it hanging there, off the hook. Maybe this happened at the site of this bygone Telebeam payphone. There is a telephonic heritage to the expression "ring off the hook", that phrase referring to an incident or individual which prompted enough interest to cause its telephone to ring so much that it could not stay on the hook. The most commonly associated etymology for "off the hook" refers to the fishing scenario in which a lucky fish is caught but then taken off the fishing hook let free by its captor. I do not doubt the provenance of those derivations but I like mine, too, even if I fully concocted it.

This gutted out ghost of a payphone past has looked like this for over a year.

Some might call this a "phone booth" but they would be mistaken. A "phone booth" is a structure with a door, a light, a fan, and possibly a local telephone book. Examples of New York City phone booths can be seen here, here, here, and here -- among many other places.

This is a payphone enclosure on a pedestal. It is not a phone booth.

Thank you for letting me clarify this important matter.

I spotted this Verizon payphone about a month ago, and was surprised to see that it is still busted up, dangling by its thin wires in a useless, vegetative state. This payphone's number is (718) 729-9344.

I have noticed a lot of gutted out and murdered payphones of late. Many of the phones have been surgically removed by the payphone owners, leaving just an empty hull on a city sidewalk. In the coming weeks I will be sharing photos of some of these empty payphone enclosures, this in anticipation of what I assume will be their complete removal.

I see phones like this one and I have to ask, what does it take to shatter a phone in this manner? I ask not about the physical force needed but about the decision making process, the minute-to-minute circumstances that led a human being to end a phone call by smashing the device. But why assume there even was a conversation? Idle hooligans and guttersnipes. wandering past a public phone, may have chosen this object as an outlet for showmanship, their energies guided by ignorance or indifference toward the consequences of their actions.

Whatever the case, this Verizon payphone has been a useless museum piece for many weeks. In the past I might have assumed a phone like this would be repaired. These days I imagine instead that Verizon would find that it makes as much financial sense to just remove it.

The 9/11 Payphone (as I called it) actually had nothing to do with 9/11. Located in Long Island City, this phone happened to be next to a 9/11 mural which was among the first of its vintage to rise up from the hands New York City graf artists after the events of that day. I think the artist's name (seen at the top left) is either PHYNE1 or PHYME1.

I noticed the other day that the payphone is gone, but the empty enclosure remains. Vacant payphone cabinets such as this have been common in all cities for some time. The removal of the phone is a precursor to the eventual removal of the payphone stand and enclosure. I believe this job is the responsibility of the city. A square outline on the sidewalk will leave only an echo of this once-vital resource.

If I were to choose a real 9/11 payphone -- a phone in proximity of the Towers which survived that day -- then I might choose this one, on Vesey Street, seen here with the pits of Ground Zero just a few feet behind it.

Another choice -- maybe a better one -- would be the payphones in this picture (taken with my Canon ELPH APS Camera). These phones were in the lower level of the Twin Towers.

When I first started collecting payphone numbers and locations in New York I made an effort to get numbers in locations that I thought would be useful for reporters or radio groupies trying to reach individuals at the scene of significant events. I never told anyone I was doing this at the time. It seemed like a long way from my lot in life as a corporate drone to someone making potentially useful niche resources.

I gathered numbers for payphones at places like Shea Stadium, Yankee Stadium, and the World Trade Center. I imagined some enterprising reporter might use the list to, for instance, call a payphone at Yankee Stadium after a Yankees World Series victory to get a perspective from a real baseball fan expanding their throes of ecstasy by answering a ringing payphone.

After the 1993 bombings of the Trade Center I made a project of gathering the payphone numbers for the public phones in the concourse level. In the event of another attack I imagined a reporter or other interested party reaching into the Towers for genuine descriptions of what was happening inside.

In retrospect this would likely have endangered the life of whoever answered, keeping them inside the building summoning up quotable commentary to a reporter while they should have been exiting the building.

Raynard Bagley sends this interesting photo, showing a phone booth in the North of Belgium. This old booth is steadily disappearing into a thicket of shrubs.

Raynard's photo of this overgrown Belgacom booth reminded me of a photo sent in a few years ago, showing a BT phone booth around the corner from Highgate in London. This little structure looks more like a terrarium than a phone booth:

Public telephony is fading from prominence, but how often do you encounter such vivid visual metaphors for the situation?

This payphone picture was originally posted to my New York City Payphones gallery in the late 1990s.



This payphone virtually never worked and was removed many years ago. I did use it, though, when it worked. The last time I tried to use it may have been during the blackout of 2003. I was surprised to find that it (like most payphones I found) did not work. This went against what I thought was the conventional wisdom which said that landline phones (including payphones) should work during power failures. Of course this payphone might simply have been out of service before the blackout.



This phone stood between what used to be a convenience store and a bar. I think the bar was the Café Blue Light when this picture was taken but I could be wrong. That space has hosted numerous pubs and social clubs over the years. The Blue Light did occupy the space near this payphone at some point, but today that corner pub is occupied by a wine and cheese bar called Rèst-âü-Ránt (the fancy lettering, I am told, was invoked at random and means nothing).



All that remains of this phone today is a square on the sidewalk. The phone was pulled out, and perhaps it was among the casualties in this pile of dead payphones that I spotted nearby at around the same time.

Sometimes I think I see ghosts of phone booths past. Outlines. Shadows. Tracings of where full booths once surrounded and fully enclosed public phones on city streets.

Free-standing outdoor phone booths are rare. There are only four phone booths in Manhattan, and when last I looked there were a couple of abandoned booths hulking like ghosts on Yankee Pier off Governors Island.

These two payphones in midtown Manhattan are framed by a phantom border, by a seemingly superfluous outline on the sidewalk beneath the phones. Surrounding that outline is another aura which seems to indicate that a grounded, rounded structure once stood here. The rectangle is distinct from the rest of the sidewalk grid, and the presence of payphones here today suggests to me that these half-closed enclosures are descendants of those mostly-vanished outdoor phone booths.


(212) 245-0756 and (212) 245-0877

The base of this payphone on Manhattan's Upper East Side is framed by a caulked-over rectangle, suggesting that a full booth with a closing door, a fan, a light, and a phone book once stood where a modern payphone enclosure stands today.


(212) 650-9483

I have not seen very many pictures of Manhattan's outdoor phone booths of yore. I own one photo which shows part of a New York City phone booth in 1965. The word "Telephone" in green at the top right of this photo sits atop a fully enclosed phone booth which has long since disappeared. After some research I deduced that this phone booth was located at 2nd Avenue and 44th Street.


Phone Booth and Street Scene, NYC, 1965

The booth is gone but there are two payphones at this location today. Their numbers are (212) 697-7757 and (212) 972-5383.

Unfortunately for my research the sidewalk today bears no outline of where this booth once stood.

Other midtown Manhattan payphones seems to show traces of phone booths that once surrounded their space:

These are what I call the Letterman Payphones. The first picture shows a group of payphones as they looked circa 1999. The next photo, from roughly 10 years later, shows that those 3 payphones were replaced by 2, with an advertising-laced enclosure placed over them.

I call these the Letterman Payphones because Dave Letterman used to call these payphones from his desk at the nearby Ed Sullivan Theater. He called other New York City payphones too but he called these phones on a number of occasions when I happened to watch the show. His intent always seemed to be random, and depending on who answered and what kind of conversation ensued Dave might invite the person into the studio, ushering the bewildered passer-by onto stage as hundreds of adoring fans cheered wildly.

Like a lot of Dave's shticks it was not always easy to tell if it was planned. I used to call these payphones myself and all I can say is that when I called the people who picked up had things to say that were not suitable for broadcast television. The first words spoken clearly indicated that the person who answered expected this payphone call would lead to some kind of encounter. Letterman, through perseverance or planning I do not know, seemed to often get all-America types of tourists and everyday folk.

The last time I saw this routine on the show it seemed obvious that the person who answered the phone was expecting the call. Maybe Dave himself planned it or maybe the person (who seemed to be an actor) got word from sources that a call was coming to that payphone. Whatever the case it was not random and not very funny, and I seem to remember hearing a bit of dismay in Dave's voice when it seemed obvious to him that this person expected the call.

Does Dave call payphones any more? I do not know. I watch the show once in a while -- a friend and I attended a taping live at the Ed Sullivan Theater earlier this year -- but I have not spotted a payphone bit in a long time. Payphones are mostly programmed to reject incoming calls, and unless Worldwide Pants (the show's production company) is able to circumvent that by arrangement with Verizon or individual payphone owners then it seems like the Letterman payphone skits of yore are no longer possible, at least through these and other midtown Manhattan payphones.

The numbers for these phones are (212) 246-9175 and (212) 974-9778. These phones actually can accept incoming calls, though it is unlikely that a random passer-by would pick up. The phones ring very faintly, and they drop to their internal modem after the first ring. If someone at this phone is expecting your call and standing right at the phone then they should be able to hear it ring once and pick up before the modem kicks in.

Tomorrow is the anniversary date of the Northeast Blackout of 2003. That was a memorable day for me in many ways but a memory I recall best is this shot of several people lined up to use a payphone at Queensboro Plaza in Queens.

This is near the Queensboro/59th Street Bridge, which was the entry and/or exit point for people who had to walk to or from Manhattan to get to or from Queens.

I like this photo. It shows a random gathering of people who, in an emergency, found that they needed a payphone. Emergencies tend to be among the few circumstances in which people seek out payphones any more. A blackout today would probably result in even longer lines at this payphone, because while this payphone has survived the last 6 years many more in this area have not.

I recently found all of my photos from the 2003 Blackout. While hardly a thrilling photo essay I nevertheless have come to appreciate these little time capsules of events, whether they be memorable or not. In a similar spirit last year I found all the photos I took on September 11, 2001; and on September 17, 2001, the day I went to Ground Zero. I never intended or desired to look at all of those pictures again -- I went so far as to vow that I never would look at them again for fear of reliving the horror of that day -- but with these years of remove I find it amazing that these tiny windows onto that day communicate so little of how it felt.

But I digress.

The Blackout Payphone (as I call it) is still in place today, perhaps waiting for another crisis that will thrust it back into usefelness.

My purely anecdotal observations suggest that this payphone does, in fact, get a fair amount of use these days. Someone in the payphone business once told me that a public phone only needs to make a dollar a day to be profitable. In the short time I spent getting this picture I watched as this payphone earned its daily dollar.

The coffee shop is still closed (I can not remember it ever being open) and its old school phone number is chipping away. I call the phone number on the coffee shop's awning "old school" because it has no area code, placing its origins somewhere in the enormous space of years between Telephone Exchange Name numbers like "Astoria 0-8090" and today's geographically arbitrary area codes which have become mandatory dialing almost everywhere in America.

One metal post by the phone is bent, probably from being hit by a vehicle.

I could not re-create the exact angle from which I got the picture in 2003. Road work caused the area where I sat 6 years ago to be fenced off.

My friend Rachel directed me to these beautiful old phone booths in Brooklyn. The lights are out and the fans do not blow air but the doors close and the phones work. These might be the most perfect booths in all of New York.

These payphones at 1271 6th Avenue are long gone. The first picture shows a cluster of three payphones in either 1999 or 2000. The next two photos show what remains of these phones today, including the spikes in the sidewalk where the base of the payphones used to be.

These pictures show a payphone at 33rd Street and 34th Avenue in Astoria. The first picture is from 1999, the next was taken 10 years later in August, 2009.

The payphone location survives, though the phone itself has been swapped. The payphone handset is now bright yellow, replacing the earlier black handset.

What I find interesting about these pictures is not just the payphone but the details of other ephemeral change at this intersection.

Formerly called El Charrito the bodega is now called EL GALLITO GROCERY CORP. The word "SANDWICHS" is still mis-spelled on the awning. (I might add SANDWICHS to my photo series of Typos, Engrish, and Public Grammar Gaffes.)

Armando's Pizza is now Lentini's II Pizza. Lentini's II recently changed its name and I for one have already forgotten what the place was called only a few months ago.

The zebra crosswalk has been re-painted and it appears the curbside parking space has been moved back several feet.

A School Crossing sign is now in a spot where it partly obscures the store's awning.

One thing that has not changed (besides the payphone location) is the fact that I rarely enter El Gallito/El Charrito.

Someone asked me recently "Who the heck uses payphones any more?" My response: Poor people and tourists. As someone in the payphone business once told me, until the world runs out of poor people there will always be a need for payphones. Similarly I think that tourists, especially foreign tourists, will continue to rely on payphones rather then getting robbed by cell phone carriers' international connection fees.

As if to prove my point I got this nice e-mail from Debbie Henson, describing how her daughter is travelling across America without a cell phone, and how frustrating it can be to find a working, usable payphone in this country.

Hi Mark,

I have lurked around this site and enjoyed it for a few years now. I originally was looking for info on Burning Man and somehow found information on a phone booth out in the desert. I come back every now and then to check it out.

Currently my daughter is traveling across your country on a summer adventure. Without a cell phone she looks for phone booths to call home. She can usually only find a pay phone in Wal-Marts. If there are 3 phones only 1 may be in working order. I can hardly hear her and she has trouble hearing me due to background noise.

I have told her about your project and have asked her to take a picture if she ever finds a phone booth not in a Wal-Mart.

I took a photo last year on Vancouver Island that I thought you may be interested in but I don't have the phone number.

Thanks to Debbie for checking in, and for adding to the Payphone Project's series of Payphones in Canada.

This grainy photo, taken with my cell phone, shows a real rarity. This is a fully functional rotary dial payphone. This phone is actively used at a business somewhere in the 5 boroughs on New York City.

I will not reveal the location of this phone. If the phone company gets word of this phone's location they will dispatch a crew to "fix" it -- but that would be a waste because this phone works just fine.

I know a little bit about the history of this establishment, and by my estimate the rotary dial has been spinning on this payphone since at least the 1980s. It may have been in this spot since the 1970s.

Last year I found a rotary dial payphone at the King Penny Hardware Store on Ditmars Boulevard in Astoria. The phone does not work, and probably has not worked for many years, but its number was (718) 278-9139.
I also spotted an amazing phone booth with a rotary dial payphone on 35th Avenue in Astoria. It was cool to see but alas, that phone booth was merely a prop for a filming of the short-lived television show Life on Mars.

My earliest time spent living in New York City included long hours clutching any of these rotary dial payphones at the Parc Lincoln in Manhattan. Those phone booths are altogether gone.

Here is a midtown Manhattan public telephone location that has survived the payphone meltdown of the last 15 years. It is located on 6th Avenue near 55th Street.

The first picture was taken sometime around 1999, and shows this phone with Bell Atlantic branding. Bell Atlantic swallowed up GTE in June, 2000, and the combined company became Verizon. At that time the Bell Atlantic branding was supposed to be removed from all public phones, though to this day vestiges of the old branding remain on any number of public phones -- this composite photo, for instance, shows a hybrid Verizon/Bell Atlantic branded phone in Queens which I spotted last year.

No obvious traces of a Bell Atlantic insignia remain visible on this phone, though the handset bears residue of an adhesive sticker which might have had Bell Atlantic branding.

The next two pictures are from August, 2009, and show that elements the telephone set itself have been swapped out but the location remains. I assume the number has also stayed the same during this time, though I have no record of (212) 245-9500 in any of my payphone databases. (What a desirable phone number, by the way. It should be owned by a bank!)

The keypad has changed from a typical push-button with square keys to this more minimal nipple-style keypad.

The Astro Restaurant seen behind and to the left of the payphone is still in business, while the "Traditional Indian Cuisine" location (for rent at the time) is now taken by a place called Venus. The unnamed store at the far right is now called 55th Digital.

I wonder what the "7/22" signifies. July 22? There is a "7/22" written in Sharpie at the top right of this enclosure:

The first photo is from May, 2003, and shows a payphone outside of Tiffany Insurance on 36th Avenue and 32nd Street in Astoria. The next two photos are from August, 2009. Tiffany Insurance is still in business but has since moved to another location in Astoria. This payphone disappeared years ago. Only 4 holes and a square remain on the sidewalk where this payphone used to be.

The above photo was originally posted here in May, 2003.

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