I found this interesting little window into a piece of New York City’s payphone past at the Getty Images website. A 1-minute piece about a 30-second payphone aired June 1, 1977, on WPIX Channel 11. There were plenty of payphones at Penn Station but one was different from the rest. For a quarter one could call anywhere in New York State except the five boroughs, but you had to make it short and sweet. Without any warning your call would end after 30 seconds.

It does not appear I can embed Getty’s videos into this page without paying a $200 royalty, so you’ll have to click on over (popup window) to see the whole thing.

What appears to be a real-world payphone user is seen calling his wife to tell her what train he was taking so she could pick him up. He comments afterward that he saved a good amount of money compared to what the call would have cost using regular phones at the station.

I guess this gentleman misspoke. He said he paid 50¢ for the call, but the placard above the phone says 30 second calls are only 25¢. Maybe he made two calls? It doesn’t sound like it from his comments.

What I find somewhat remarkable about the phones seen in this WPIX clip is that they look exactly like the ones still in use today, save for the fact that most now have shields around the keypads to prevent shoulder surfing. If this video really is from 1977 (is it?) that means Penn Station’s remaining payphones today may have been in continuous service for over 44 years.

At 0:18 we hear from an unnamed individual presumed to be from the phone company respond to questions from the WPIX reporter.

At 0:43 there’s an image of a Penn Station TELEPHONE CENTER, teeming with payphones:

At first I thought that might be the same enormous telephone room that inhabited Penn Station as late as 2012, but it does not look like it. My photo from 2012 shows this room with an absurdly huge quantity of payphones, almost none of which worked. Today this room is gone.

Then there is this action shot of real world Penn Station payphone users, a sight you can still see today, though nowhere near as often. I have captured several photos of today’s Penn Station payphone users but once I got video, at 2:42 in my roundup of what is probably the largest quantity of working payphones under one roof in New York.

Penn Station Payphone Users, 1977

From the WPIX piece I cannot determine exactly where any of these phones used to be at Penn Station, but I’ll file this under “Payphones Then and Now” anyway.

A remnant 30-second payphone survives today, but not at Penn Station, and of course it does not work. A non-working phone, its handset held together by duct tape, that used to allow 30-second calls anywhere in New York state still inhabits the Northwest Passage at Grand Central Terminal. I don’t know when this phone died but until probably the early 2000s it allowed 30-second calls anywhere in New York State outside the 5 boroughs. These 30-second phones must have been pretty popular to have hung around so long.

The number shown on the phone, 212-599-8631, is listed on the Payphone Project on this page, but at a different location

I spotted a couple of goofs, one in the WPIX video and another on the Getty Images page. I’m not sure what’s happening at the 0:04 point. Why are we looking at ½ the face of someone wearing what looks like an earpiece and a microphone? I’m guessing it’s a producer or crew member but he appears to be out of doors, not inside Penn Station, making him potentially uninvolved with this 1-minute segment. What gives?

Getty’s goof is that if you look at the “Object name” in the Details column this video’s filename is “844171_30_cents_Payphone_PKG.mov”. Shouldn’t that be “844171_30_seconds_Payphone_PKG.mov”? I believe it should. Details details…