By Carol Tannenhauser
The headline of Secret NYC was unambiguous, as were those of several other sources, including the New York Post:
“NYC’s Last Free-Standing Payphone Has Officially Been Removed”
“But has it been???” reader Alison McGuigan asked in an email to WSR. “I live on West End Ave/93rd and there is a phone booth on WEA/90th (photo above)! Is this some kind of ironic art installation or the last phone booth in NYC/Manhattan?”
Yes, Allison. There is a phone booth.
In fact, there are four still standing, all on the Upper West Side, all on West End Avenue, on 66th 90th, 100th, and 101st Streets. We took a little jaunt and checked them out. None of the booths had doors. Three of the phones had dial tones, one was dead. We only had one quarter, which the phone ingested, then asked for 50 cents more, then went silent.
In case you still think it might be an illusion, Alison, below are pictures to prove their existence. But why were they spared? We researched high and low, and then found the answer in our own archives!
HISTORY RIPPED ASUNDER: THE LAST 4 REMAINING PHONE BOOTHS IN NYC ARE BEING REPLACED
And The New York Times had a story, too.
Shhh don’t tell ’em or they will come and take them away. The one on 100th has for a long time been disconnected, I go by it daily and you can see there are no wires going into it.
If they take them what will george reeves use to change in?
George Reeves no, 1940s comic strip yes
https://www.supermanhomepage.com/other/other.php?topic=phonebooth
Who is George Reeves? Do you mean Christopher Reeve? Or is George a Superman alter ego I’m unfamiliar with? 🙂
George Reeves was Superman on TV in the ’50s. Before that he was one of Scarlett O’Hara’s suitors before the war.
George Reeves’s Superman never changed in a phone booth!!!!! Usually a supply closet in the Daily Planet Building.
The ones that were removed were public phones. These are private phone booths on the UWS.
I don’t have a cellphone so I’d gladly pay to use a pay phone… if they ever worked.
But no: they never did; the last time I got ripped off I realized they were actually not phone booths but rather sidewalk toll booths whose sole purpose is to dun NYC street life.
I was surprised to hear WNYC repeat this story as if it was true.
There’s a phone booth just a few blocks from me
O.M.G.!! Finally a place for E.T. to “phone home!”
ALSO a place for weirdos to once again write “Dial PEACHES for a good time”
Thank goodness we can still visit the Lonely Phone Booth at 100th and West End Avenue.
https://www.amazon.com/Lonely-Phonebooth-Peter-Ackerman/dp/156792414X
There is a great and funny children’s book about the one on WEA and 100th – The Lonely Phone Booth!
Save the Lonely Phone Booth!
Back in the day, it was commonplace for production companies for TV shows or movies to place the old phone booths where they never actually existed. In the movie “The Goodbye Girl,” there’s a scene where Richard Dreyfuss calls Marsha Mason’s 78th Street apartment from a phone booth on corner of Amsterdam and 78th while it’s raining. There was never a phone booth on that corner other than for that movie shoot. And in “Superman,” Christopher Reeve’s Clark Kent goes to a phone booth to change into Superman but it’s one of those newer open booths without a door.
We call the one at 66th the phone booth museum.
Calls are free from some of these remaining booths. Or at least they were a few years ago because a neighborhood association was paying to keep them up and running. No quarters required.
https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/doitt/downloads/pdf/Attachment-SRV-Services-(REVISED-FINAL-12-10-2014).pdf
Para. 1.2.8
“which the phone [sic] ingested, then asked for 50 cents more, then went silent.” one of the 3 with dial tone? I like the both outside the tsunami zone in Japan where one can call the dead.
booth near the tsunami zone
The phone booth is perfect to be recycled MTA transit shelters with community boards just add a seat and you are saved from mother nature’s force! or
The community boards should adopt all four of the phone booths for messaging analog purposes. or
art installations with a calendar for artist reservations.
Clark Kent could never change in these booths. He would be seen and exposed. Horrors!
It was Alan Flacks who pushed Gale Brewer to make sure that these phone booths are kept around. Whatever happened to him.
Umm. STILL wrong. Two more on 83rd and Broadway you forgot about
There’s also one on 104th and Broadway.
There were four phone booths in the entryway to the underground parking garage at 79th St. right on the Hudson River – the garage is used only by Parks workers (they have an office inside) and people who have boats on the pier there. I was working there ten years ago and I think they still worked.
I think the high attrition rate for phone booths is because of Underdog. Every time Shoeshine Boy went into a booth to change into Underdog, the booth explodes. That adds up.