Abandoned Payphone in a Cage

Who couldn’t love a payphone in a cage?

This caged payphone has been useless for years, its body beaten and its dial tone and handset long gone.

This abandoned payphone lingers as a monument to the faded and bedraggled world of public telephony. Its push-buttons are useless. Evidently someone attacked the phone, forcing the 9 and the # keys into submission.

Abandoned payphones survive in New York, as in all cities and towns, for reasons seldom announced or made obvious. The once-responsible party has probably moved on, exiting the payphone business for other opportunities, leaving others to clean up after their failed business.

Maybe the owner of this payphone followed a trend among payphone operators, moving toward vending machines, ATMs, or infinite Internet jukeboxes and Megatouch/iTouch video games in bars and restaurants.

The date of April 28, 1993, is stamped on the phone, possibly as evidence of this payphone’s date of birth. Payphones were everywhere in 1993. I have long assumed (with no factual data to back up my belief) that the rise in the number of people who carried pagers in the early and mid-1990s helped fuel a final resurgence of payphones. It was to the nearest payphone that people ran when a callback number showed up on their pager.

This battered payphone hulk remains inside a strange-looking cage which partly envelops it. Perhaps the cage was once part of a more substantive enclosure or phone booth, providing payphone users with protection from the elements, and some isolation from the amazing amount of noise in this area.

Whatever its past, today the cage is a useless deterrent against vandalism and violence. Standing inside this cage creates a feeling of eeriness. It is not just that standing inside a cage is eerie, but also being so close to the public state of decay which characterizes this once-valued resource.

This payphone is not exactly isolated, or hidden. Yet it is in something of a no-man’s land on 21st Street in Long Island City, at a transient intersection through which many people pass but where few people stick around.

The payphone in a cage is posted to the corner of the Eagle Insulation, Inc., building at 42-14 21st Street, and next door to the Bridge Stop gas station at 42-02 21st Street. Under the scrappy noise of the nearby Ed Koch/Queensboro Bridge, this payphone was probably never a great place to make or receive a call.

Look for these abandoned payphones at Weburbanist.com.