Payphones Past

1943: WOrth 2-8354, Rotary Dial Payphone

Shorpy.com features this photo of a young sailor using a rotary dial public pay telephone in January, 1943.

The caption indicates the photo was taken on Mulberry Street in Manhattan.

If you go over to Shorpy.com and click through to the larger version of this picture you’ll see that the payphone number shown on the rotary dialer is in the old-style Telephone Exchange Name format: WOrth 2-8354.

Translated into modern phone number format the number today would be (212) 962-8354. It appears this Mulberry street phone was not the last public telephone to which that phone number was assigned. A little bit of sleuthing reveals that (212) 962-8354 is listed on the old Payphone Project, and that the phone number was reassigned to a payphone at or near the Post Office on 8th Avenue and 31st Street in Manhattan.

Today the number is out of service.

Old-style telephone exchange name phone numbers were retired from general use decades ago, but if you keep your eyes open you can still see them on old signs and in random places around New York.

The WOrth exchange seen on the payphone used by the sailor was on the signage at the Porto Rico Importing Company at 107 Thompson Street. That place closed a couple of years ago. Today the space is inhabited by Salud, an organic food shop.

You can still spot surviving examples of Telephone Exchange Name Phone Numbers in various nooks and crannies of New York City. Sometimes you have to look up, as in this appearance of the ALgonquin exchange name in midtown. Other times you have to look down, as in this appearance of the HAVemeyer Exchange Name seen on numerous sidewalk-level metal doors which open into basements and spaces beneath New York’s buildings.

A few favorites from my collection of Telephone Exchange Name Sightings: