Almost Immaculate Old Phone Booth In Astoria

Thanks to a tip from a Facebook friend I now know where to find what is probably the most immaculate old phone booth in Astoria, Queens. It’s at the Farenga Funeral Home on Ditmars Boulevard. The printed phone number has the 212 area code, from when all five boroughs used 212. Someone hand-wrote the new 718 area code on top of it. There is some graffiti and wear on this booth but for probably having been on this spot since the 1970s it looks pretty good. The phone is dead, which seems appropriate. It’s at a funeral home, after all. But the payphone number is actually listed on my website’s archive of old payphone numbers and locations.

 

It seems like almost every payphone of a certain vintage in New York is riddled with chisel marks and scratchiti, as seen on the right side of this old phone. There was no dial tone.

 

This payphone number — (718) 278-8017 — is found among the 750,000 or so payphone numbers in the Payphone Project data museum of mostly defunct payphone numbers and locations in the U.S. The number shown on the phone, with its 212 area code manually corrected to 718, indicates that a phone had been in place at this location before the area code for Queens was changed to 718. That was in 1984. The phone device itself has almost certainly been replaced over the decades but the payphone number for this location stayed the same. Someone took a a pen and wrote the new 718 area code on top of the old 212. The booth has probably been in place since the 1970s. In Telephone Exchange Name parlance (before there were area codes) this phone number would have been AStoria 8-8017.

 

The overhead blower fan and light did not work. This could probably be fixed should a Luddite revolution arise and throngs discard their cell phones and demand payphones return. That is not going to happen.

 

EDWIN? Where are you now, EDWIN?

 

The door did close all the way. In addition to the phone being dead I found another reason for it to be appropriate that this old phone booth in a funeral home. I’ve long felt that stepping into a booth like and closing the door feels like stepping into a coffin. Maybe that’s a little morbid but in most cases I find that sitting in a phone booth as their design intends is claustrophobic and uncomfortable. When I was in a phone booth I mostly just wanted to make a phone call and get out as quickly as possible.