CityRealty Insider > The Way We Were: Phone Booths

The Way We Were: Phone Booths

OCTOBER 13, 2009

When was the last time you dropped a dime?

At some point in recent history, the pay telephone seemed like one of our most useful public inventions. They're a part of big-city culture: Everyone knows what it means to "drop a dime” and of course, where would Superman have been without them? Mark Thomas, the man behind The Payphone Project, originally began the project to promote contact between random strangers. Photos of the iconic phones and more can be found on the site, alongside tales and facts on phone booth evolution. You can even buy old pay phones on ebay at the site.

New York City pay phone facts:
There are, at last count, only four full-sized, working outdoor phone booths in Manhattan, and all of them are on West End Avenue.

There is rumored to be one working rotary dial pay phone left in the city, as evidenced by this grainy photo. Location unknown.

The number of pay phones nationwide has shrunk from 2.6 million in 1998 to 1 million today.

More pay phone and phone booth facts and photos can be found here and here.

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