Nothing remains of this payphone, photographed in March, 2004. Nothing, that is, save for the metal spikes in the sidewalk, those slivers of detritus which mark the spots where countless payphones used to stand on city sidewalks and walkways. The above photo was originally posted to my New York City Payphones Gallery. I do not…
This payphone, once located near the Blackout Payphone, is gone, as are a number of other objects which once lined this curbside at 2927 41st Avenue at Queens Plaza. Plaza Video, a smut shop seen in the background, has been replaced a couple of times since this picture was taken in November, 2006. At present…
This horribly blurry and wobbly picture shows a payphone at the 5th Avenue subway stop in May, 2000. For obvious reasons I never posted this picture, but upon seeing it now I think it makes sense to use it as part of this Payphones Then and Now series, showing payphone locations around New York as…
The New York Times notes the passing of Russian poet Andrei Voznesensky. His poem “Phone Booth” follows. Someone is loose in Moscow who won’t stopRinging my phone.Whoever-it-is listens, then hangs up.Dial tone. What do you want? A bushel of rhymes or so?An autograph? A bone?Hello?Dial tone. Someone’s lucky number, for all I know,Is the same,…
Dan Z. was there when the bastards took our phone booths away! The insufferable, unimaginable, unquenchable, inexhaustible bastards hauled off the phone booths from the Vince Lombardi Service Stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. This handsome series of metal phone booths is gone, gone, gone. The above picture shows the “face of evil” spiriting the…
The payphone across from the Metro Motel in Woodside, Queens, is gone gone gone, leaving but 6 metal spikes in the sidewalk at the corner of Queens Boulevard and 73rd Street. Being located near a motel which caters to travelers and transients I expected this payphone to still be here. I was wrong. This picture,…
This picture from early 1999 shows a man standing next to a payphone while talking on a cell phone as his friend waits for him. Scenes like this used to annoy me. Cell phone boors were a new irritant in 1999, and it seemed particularly pretentious to use a cell while standing right next to…
This picture is from March, 2000. The payphone in this photo formerly stood outside of Unlimited Lingerie on Steinway Street in Astoria. Today the payphone is gone. Unlimited Lingerie remains. All that is left of the phone are these metal pipes which helped secure the payphone to the ground.
This set of four payphones and the individuals using them no longer stand at the corner of 50th Street and Broadway in Manhattan. This picture is from April, 2001. The pictures at the end of this story, showing the same spot where these payphones used to be, are from September, 2009. I remember this picture…
Continuing my series of Payphones in New York City Then and Now, I present a set of payphone survivors in Midtown Manhattan. There are three payphones here, as seen first in May, 2000, and again in May, 2010. In this case it seems more accurate to say that the payphone locations, not the payphones themselves,…
Continuing my lightly-updated series of “Then and Now” pictures of payphones in New York City, I spent the last few days tracking down payphones which I photographed ten years ago in this very month of May, Y2K. Ten years later I find that many of the payphones are gone, but a surprising number survive. Many…
Spotted a payphone factory today. Wow!
A lot has changed around Hunters Point South in Long Island City. Most of the payphones are gone. Some survive, but not many. I staked out a location which had a payphone in May, 2004. Not surprisingly that payphone is gone. In its wake is an empty street corner, with ghostly echoes of the payphone’s…
MPNnow.com reports: “The Verizon phone technician never saw it coming. “Armed with the customary work order, and with the uneventful removal of a pay phone at Newark’s Village Hall fresh in his mind, he entered Farmington Town Hall on County Road 8 Wednesday morning. “He had no idea that he was about to face a…
Blakamin writes: “I saw this box being checked out by the police and surrounded with crime scene tape on saturday” A story from the Dominion Post suggests that a pipe bomb exploded inside a Wellington, New Zealand, phone box may have been meant as a message for Telecom New Zealand, a company whose substantial service…
An anonymous correspondent writes: When I saw the telephone icon sign from a block away, I thought I’d get to take a photo of an actual public phone for this site…only to get closer and see the sign is false advertising. Minneapolis, Minnesota. April 2010Lake Street & Minnehaha Avenue outside of a liquor store.
Here is a picture I took in March, 2007, from inside one of the phone booths in the basement of the UBS Building at Rockefeller Center. That is a reflection of my hand on the right, but I know not the identity of the man 3 booths down.
An anonymous correspondent writes: “The exponential increase of cell phones, even in the ancient town of Nablus, is likely the reason for the removal of this phone outside of the Jasmine Hotel.” Nablus, West Bank, Occupied Palestinian Territories. March 2010.
I see a face crying out from the basin of this gutted payphone. This face has its mouth opened wide, the wire of communication blurts uselessly forth. The face’s nose is flattened to one side and its screw-for-eyebrows are stuck in place over glassy, tear-filled eyes. I can’t decide what this face is trying to…
Here is a midtown Manhattan public telephone location that has survived the payphone meltdown of the last 15 years. It is located on 6th Avenue near 55th Street. The first picture was taken sometime around 1999, and shows this phone with Bell Atlantic branding. Bell Atlantic swallowed up GTE in June, 2000, and the combined…
The first photo is from May, 2003, and shows a payphone outside of Tiffany Insurance on 36th Avenue and 32nd Street in Astoria. The next two photos are from August, 2009. Tiffany Insurance is still in business but has since moved to another location in Astoria. This payphone disappeared years ago. Only 4 holes and…
Two of my life’s loves meet in this alley near New Calvary Cemetery on Queens Boulevard. It is a payphone at a cemetery. My interest in payphones dates to grade school but in more recent years I have developed an interest in some of the cemeteries and graveyards of New York City — with particular…
Daniel Zubiate, of Breakwell PictureZ, has been a long-time friend of the Payphone Project, and has lately been filling up the Texas Payphone Photos Section with recent shots of payphones in Buda, El Paso, and Austin. Among Daniel’s finds is this outdoor phone booth at the Salt Flat Café in Salt Flat, Texas. Texas is…
Iljitsch van Beijnum writes: “In my home town (well, city) of The Hague, the Netherlands, there are two booths right in front of the entrance to the Binnenhof, where the two chambers of parliament are housed and the prime minister has his office. “The interesting thing here is that the actual phone booth (the other…