Payphones Past

Then and Now

StreetMessages.com: The Domain Name That Got Away

An abandoned payphone outside the abandoned headquarters for StreetMessages.com provided an amusing antidote to a fresh appearance of that defunct…

8 years ago

A Times Square Payphone’s Unique Memorial

Whoever removed the payphone from this wall at the Times Square subway station seems to have done so with a…

9 years ago

Down and Out. He Should Have a Telephone of His Own.

This haiku-like New York Telephone advertisement from the New York Times, June 13, 1906, shows that stigmas associated with payphone…

9 years ago

Phone Booths at the Met Breuer Museum

My first thought on hearing that the Met Breuer was taking over the old Whitney building was, naturally enough, “What…

9 years ago

The Bronx Zoo Goes Payphone Free

Signs throughout the Bronx Zoo promise its visitors public telephones in a number of locations. Lies, all of them. There are no…

10 years ago

Payphone Flashback, 1976: Honesty is the Best Policy

Acting on impulse one day late last summer, young Alfred Higley Jr. proved that honesty still lives. The 12-year-old, who…

10 years ago

Abandoned Verizon Payphones at 77 Water Street

Phones like this stay in place for years, not even attracting the interest of thieves. An abandoned Verizon payphone (should…

10 years ago

1987: New York City Payphone Users

This photo of two random New Yorkers carrying on unrelated conversations within spitting distance of each other using New York…

10 years ago

Payphones I Used To Know: a.k.a. Vandalism 101

Some time ago I commenced a project in which I intended to capture and perpetuate the memory of payphones in…

10 years ago

Concord, Vermont. FairPoint Communications Phone Booth.

Erica Avery checks in again with these shots of a phone booth outside a FairPoint Communications building in Concord, Vermont.…

10 years ago