I made two bus trips to upstate New York this year. On those trips I noticed billboards with phone numbers using the old Telephone Exchange Name format. The signs passed by so fast I was unable to get photos of them, and I did not think to write them down, but I seem to remember the phone numbers belonged to real estate agents in the area. It seemed like a deliberate attempt to revive Telephone Exchange Names, an old practice of making phone calls in a way that included the name of the neighborhood in which the person being called was located.
The Exchange Name system fell out of general use long ago, but I wonder if its revival upstate is inspired by the Telephone Exchange Name Project web site, a long-time favorite of mine that I check in on once in a while if only to make sure it still exists. If you do not know what a Telephone Exchange Name is or why I think it is special to see them then give the above-mentioned link a quick read. The TEN Project collects exchange names from old phone books, personal recollection, and other sources, and encourages a common sense revival of Exchange Names today. I referred to the TEN Project today after getting together these photos of telephone exchange names I have seen around NYC. Some years ago I considered making a single project of this and assembling as many of these sightings as possible, but it seemed cliché. Public signage bearing exchange name numbers from generations ago are not common but they endure, often quite visibly at companies very much still in business.
UPDATE, NOVEMBER 21, 2009
This collection of Telephone Exchange Name sightings started as a one-page story with pictures, but the page grew unmanageably huge. So I broke up the story and moved the pictures and their accompanying texts to my picture essays section under the Telephone Exchange Name Sightings section.
After I started assembling these pictures (some old, some new) I was surprised to find that most of my friends to whom I described this little project had no idea what I was talking about. Telephone Exchange Names fell out of general use long ago, but for some reason I assumed their existence was at least somewhat common knowledge. After explaining further most folks remembered reading or hearing of how phone numbers used to have names associated with them, with famous ones like the Pennsylvania Telephone Exchange (used in Glenn Miller’s “Pennsylvania 6-5000”) and the Murray Hill Telephone Exchange (used in I Love Lucy) coming to mind as examples.
While scouting out exchange name numbers still displayed on buildings and signage around New York I discovered I had been staring right at them without realizing what I was looking at. The best example I have of that is from Millionaire Realty in Astoria, a company which brazenly uses its exchange-name-formatted number in such huge text that for years after first seeing it I assumed “AS4-5500” was some kind of certification or real estate license number. That’s right, Millionaire Realty in Astoria has it AS4-5500 license, your assurance that you are dealing with a quality company!
I had repeatedly seen other signs around town without being even remotely cognizant of the fact that they were old-style exchange name phone numbers. Becoming aware of this I further came to see that the companies under the signs had most likely been in business for a very long time. I came to respect that endurance as a sign of a business’ long-term credibility and I respected the decision (whether driven by inertia or a more active decision-making process) to leave these essentially useless telephonic relics posted loud and clear.
To my already lengthy list of pre-occupations I add Telephone Exchange Name Sightings. Check out the pictures! It’s all good fun. The first photo shows the giant Steinway Storage Warehouse in Long Island City, seen by thousands of daily commuters from the Queens-bound side of the Queensboro/59th Street Bridge, blasting its Exchange Name number of AStoria 8-9090 for all to see.
