Rare, Manhattan Phone Booths

The Payphone Project has long said that there are only 4 remaining outdoor, free-standing phone booths in Manhattan.

Those last outdoor phone booths of Manhattan are on West End Avenue on the Upper West Side.

This remains true, though we amend that statement somewhat since spotting these old beauties under the 79th Street Boat Basin Café, also on Manhattan’s west side:

 

These are the old-style green phone booths of Manhattan, those urine-stanky vessels removed from our streets long ago. I have lived in New York for 20 years and I remember curbside phone booths but I do not remember ever seeing one of these classic green booths until now.

These Manhattan booths are old and rickety, so much so that I decided not to close the door behind me after stepping in to one of them. I thought the door might not open again to let me out.

More old booths like this must linger in non-public basements and spaces of the five boroughs of New York.

 

These 5 booths are at the 79th Street Boat Basin Café on West 79th Street in Manhattan. A fundamental difference between these old booths and the West End Avenue phone booths is that the West End booths are outdoors. The West End Avenue booths are modern and actively maintained. These classic green phone booths booths are indoors, though they look like they have weathered an apocalypse. These old booths are decrepit and kind of spooky, though I picked up each phone and found that 2 of the 3 the Verizon payphones inside these booths have thunderously droning dial tones.

 

One of the 3 phones, in addition to its Verizon signage, sports a trifecta of payphone brands, bearing the insignias of NYNEX, New York Telephone, and Bell Atlantic.

These old booths are in a parking garage located underneath the Boat Basin Café. These phone booths have a roof over them and appear to be in what Jane Fowler Jones might have called The Unknown Deeps of Manhattan Island but they are, in fact, well above ground. In addition to Jane Fowler Jones’ tombstone poem I was reminded of the Atlanta Underground, a shopping center in Atlanta which calls itself the Underground though it is not underground. These booths, like the Atlanta Underground, are above sea level. They just happen to be located in the shadows and under the footsteps of another structure.

 

As for outdoor phone booths in New York City, I would also add that a few years ago I saw a ghostly pair of old booths lingering off of Governors Island, on Yankee Pier at Buttermilk Channel.