STillwell 6-0640 Passes Into History

I don’t know when this happened but Metro Systems Corp., a Long Island City taxi garage, changed its name to Team Systems Corp. I have no connection to or specific interest in the taxi industry so why, you ask, would I notice this?

I noticed this change of name for a very specific reason: The company changed its signage. Consequently its phone number finally made it into the 1960s, transitioning from the archaic telephone exchange name format to the full 10-digit format, area code and all.

For decades before this change passers-by saw this sign, bearing what many would consider a cryptic looking code.

Most passers-by, if they gave this sign any thought whatsoever, might have thought ST6-0640 was a license or certification number specific to the taxi industry.

New Yorkers of a certain age, however, would recognize ST6-0640 for what it was: a telephone number in the antiquated exchange name format used in the United States for about half of the 20th century. Officially retired in the 1960s the exchange name standard for publishing and sharing phone numbers was to precede 4 or 5 numbers with the first two or three letters of a word. STillwell was an Astoria/Long Island City exchange, as were AStoria, RAvenswood, and others.

Those exchange name keywords could be locally specific to historic figures or events from the neighborhood, or they could be generic. If the STillwell name had a specific connection to Astoria or Long Island City then it is lost on me. Stillwell Avenue, named for an early Brooklyn family, is a major thoroughfare in Brooklyn. When I first started noticing these old phone numbers around Astoria and Manhattan I assumed ST stood for STeinway, a name long associated with Astoria. STillwell was assigned to Astoria but it seems like STeinway would have made more sense.

Team Systems’ signage today looks like this, all modern and stuff with a 718 area code:

Another Long Island City Stillwell connection is the Stillwell Supply Corporation on Vernon Boulevard. That company’s phone number, by the way, would have been ST4-2500 back in the exchange name days.

Today when I see an Astoria/L.I.C. phone number that starts with (718) 78 I immediately recognize it as an old STillwell number. In my mind I do the code. My old landline number started with (718) 72, which I now recognize as a relic of the old RAvenswood exchange.

Consistent with its behavior of displaying its archaic phone number for generations I see that Team Taxi’s web site appears to be partially frozen in time. Directions to their garage instruct visitors to take the W to “39th/Bebe” (sic) or the V to Queens Plaza. Neither of those lines exist, though they formerly serviced those subway stations. The web site also features a spew of Drupal errors:

“Deprecated” indeed.

Another Queens company that finally brought its phone number into the 20th century was the Laurel Manufacturing Company in Maspeth, which changed its TWinings.4-9228 to the ten-digit equivalent of 718-894-9228. I noticed this last year but do not know when the change occurred.

Laurel Manufacturing took its signage update an additional step, actually joining the 21st century by papering over one of its TWinings numbers with its website URL!

I have not spotted any new-to-me Telephone Exchange Names in New York in a long time, with the exception of the HAVemeyer-4-9436, Charles Hoelzer Iron Works medallion, which I see all over the place. I keep an eye out for these things, though. I most appreciate the old and original signs which still display the old phone numbers as they did generations ago, but I don’t have a problem with the retro-like way some companies employ the old numbers. Beardslee Transmission, on Jackson Avenue, uses its old STillwell 4-4100 number on its relatively newly painted signage.

Beardslee Transmission: STillwell 4-4100

Kulka’s Fine Baking, in Jamaica, has used its AXtell 7-4270 exchange name number, apparently attempting to avoid confusion by including the (718) area code.