Winter Garden Payphones

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 someone answers the phone during the first few rings. After 3 or 4 rings this payphone diverts to its internal modem. The non-working payphone has a sticker advising customers to please use the other payphone, as this one does not work.

The number for the functioning payphone is (212) 262-2915.

Here is a picture of the Winter Garden payphones today.

The Winter Garden is where the musical CATS played for some 15 years before closing in 2000. When the show announced its closure in 2000 I made a point to go see it. After all, when I moved to New York in 1990 I remember saying to myself “Now that I live in New York I can go see CATS any time I want!” I never did, but I wanted to follow through on that silly notion once and for all. I wrote about this somewhat disheartening experience on August 20, 2000.

The interior of the theater looks more opulent today than in 2000, with marble-styled paneling and vault-like payphone enclosures embedded into the wall. Another improvement since 2000 is the presence of a Manhattan rarity: a working public water fountain. It is not necessary to spend $2 for a swig of bottled water in midtown if you know where to find these relative curiosities.

I saw CATS in 1985, during a 2-day visit to New York. Broadway was a more rugged and dangerous place in 1985 than it is in 2009, and my memories of those brief days in New York remain vivid. I was here with my mother as I auditioned for Juilliard. I auditioned for that school as well as the Eastman School of Music, the Peabody Conservatory, and the Oberlin Conservatory. Juilliard was the only one of those four schools to reject me, and that is something I never regretted or even felt bad about. Something about that place never felt like it was right for me, and I re-discovered these feelings 5 years later when I moved to New York and got some occasional gigs playing piano for instrumentalists at that school. The place felt like a factory, not a school, and indeed I came to regard Juilliard as a professional finishing school, not a more broad-based college in the way of Eastman or Oberlin. I lack the singularity of purpose to match the Juilliard environment.

Today the Winter Garden hosts Mamma Mia, a jukebox musical based on ABBA songs. Mamma Mia appears to have survived quite well on Broadway since opening in 2001. This image shows a hand-written sign I spotted on the back door of the theater in January, 2001.