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,…
Emily’s Coffee Shop, at 31-06 21st Street in Long Island City, is gone. So, too, is the payphone that used to stand outside. This photo is from March, 2001: Emily’s has been replaced by Great Pizza & Fried Chicken Inc. The only trace of the payphone that used to stand at your service is the…
This picture from August, 2000, shows a Bell Atlantic payphone in Long Island City, outside the 2000 Management Inc. garage. The space formerly occupied by 2000 Management Inc. is now home to Queens Auto Center. Ten years later the Bell Atlantic payphone which formerly hung on the wall outside the garage is gone. Evidence of…
Only the mount pedestal remains of a payphone that once stood at 37th Avenue and 22nd Street in Long Island City. This picture is from August, 2000. This picture, taken from just about the exact same spot, is from May 22, 2010.
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,…
Where are the payphones in New York City? Try the housing projects. Housing projects have lots of payphones, and most of them actually work. If you do not live in a projects, and if you ever need a payphone, then your nearest housing projects is a place to keep in mind should you find yourself…
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…
Here is my latest paean to telephone nostalgia: My collection of Telephone Exchange Name Sightings. You don’t see too many of these in the wild any more, but if you keep your eyes open (and if you know what you are looking at) then you might find them. I first noticed these old phone numbers…
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…
This is a really cool then-and-now sequence of pictures showing a set of phone booths on the New Jersey Turnpike. These two pictures show how the booths look today, and how they looked about 11 years ago.
One of the more unusual outdoor payphone enclosures I’ve seen in these parts is this Verizon payphone at Carl R. Sohncke Square on Roosevelt Avenue in Woodside, Queens. Stuck into a green, rectangular box, this homely payphone works great, but if you call it at (718) 429-8307 you will find that it accepts no incoming…
Here is something I have not seen in a long time. In fact I don’t think I have ever seen a sign like this out in the wild. I spotted this old Bell Seal sign today in front of a store in Queens, probably indicating that there used to be a payphone nearby. It is…
This before-and-after sequence spans 9½ years, and shows a payphone at the 36th Avenue/Washington Avenue subway station in Astoria. The first picture is from June, 2000. The second picture from January, 2010, shows a remarkably similar scene. The payphone itself seems to be the same. The slanted surface under the phone set (intended for note-taking,…
This pagoda-topped payphone in Chinatown reminded me of a series of pictures sent to The Payphone Project many years ago. My friend Chris, over at Christop.com, was living in Paris during the World Cup in 1998, at which time France Telecom had embarked on a unique payphone-related public art project. In honour of the World…
This TCC Teleplex payphone is, for the season, nestled among some Christmas trees on Broadway in Astoria. The number for this payphone is (718) 956-5542 but bah, humbug, it rejects incoming calls. That’s too bad, as this location is an interesting spot even without the seasonal decorations. Happy Holidays from The Payphone Project!
Of the three payphones seen in these photos from August 19, 2000 two survive today but only one still works. These payphones were in the lobby of the Winter Garden Theater on Broadway. Two payphones still hang from the lobby wall, but only one still functions. It appears to accept incoming calls, but only if…