Phone Booths at the Met Breuer Museum

The Metropolitan Museum opened a new branch in March. The new museum, called the Met Breuer, is at Madison Avenue and 75th Street, in the building formerly occupied by The Whitney. I went to the Met Breuer last week with the mistaken belief that the Diane Arbus show had already opened. I was wrong. diane arbus: in the beginning opens July 12. A casual reading of a New York Times preview of the show had me thinking it was already under way.

Still, I wanted to visit the new museum anyway, and with a free idNYC membership I didn’t have to pay the freakin’ ludicrous $25 admission fee. My first thought on hearing that the Met Breuer would take over the old Whitney building was, naturally enough, “What will they do with the phone booths in the basement?” I am sure this was the question all New Yorkers asked when they heard about the Met Breuer opening.

The Met Breuer folks did nothing with the old payphones. They are right where The Whitney folks left them: in the basement. None of them work, and were it not for the fact that the overhead lights are turned on it would appear that the very existence of these phone booths was completely overlooked by the new curators of the Met Breuer.

It does not appear that these booths ever had closing doors, but the clear dividers which separate the phones into three units is somewhat unusual for the year 2016. It would not be that surprising if one or all of these phones actually worked. The main Metropolitan Museum itself has at least one working payphone, as do other of the major NYC museums I have visited lately.

These phones used to ring “loud as hell” according to myself, who photographed one of them umpteen years ago during the glory days of my web design abilities (note: I have not improved one bit in that realm). The phone numbers I documented back then are close but not the same as the phone numbers shown on the payphones today. Maybe there were more phones back then and I just didn’t get all their numbers, or else the numbers were changed. The numbers shown on these payphones today are (212) 650-0591, (212) 650-0806, and (212) 650-0592.

The only brand name appearing on this payphone is Verizon, which appears to have left this payphone to rot. Verizon exited the payphone business years ago, and did a pretty lousy job of cleaning up after itself. I don’t know how many abandoned Verizon payphones linger like this one in buildings and out of doors but the number must be in the hundreds. (See also: Abandoned Verizon Payphones at 77 Water Street.)

The Ultratec Pay Phone TDD/TTY device is of no use. Its instructions are partially scraped away:

None of the payphone at the Met Breuer work, but the TTY/TDD phone in the middle bears branding of PTS (Pacific Telemanagement Systems). PTS is the largest payphone service provider in the United States. The presence of that company’s name on this phone suggests it was maintained and operational while The Whitney occupied the building, and that it could return to service if PTS can be reminded that they left their payphone here, and if the Met Breuer would let them back at it.

It’s a little surprising that the overhead lights work. You would think these burned out years ago. Is it possible the lights are being maintained while the payphones are not?

The small fraction of Met Breuer visitors who notice these phones probably regard them as (what else?) museum pieces. Maybe this is why the Met Breuer folks left them here? If so: Good call.

It is always fun finding these hidden gems, payphones hiding in plain sight. Too bad they don’t work.