Happy International Find a Pay Phone Booth Day! It’s increasingly rare to find a working payphone as I discussed in this story last month but it’s almost impossible to find one in an actual phone booth. However, I do know where you’ll find one!
It’s in the lobby of the Athena Grand movie theater in Athens, Ohio. There’s even a sign posted inside that let’s folks know that it really works.
It was on this day in 1876 that Alexander Graham Bell made the world’s first ever telephone call. It was to his assistant in the next room. Less than two years later, Thomas Doolittle created the first phone booth which he called a “telephone cabinet.”
While this invention would change the world in ways he may never have dreamed, Bell refused to have a telephone in his study because he feared it would be too much of a distraction from his work. I suspect he was a fan of the phone booth because you would have to be purposeful in going out to use the phone rather than spending hours in an endless conversation at home.
If you’re serious about celebrating today, go out and look for a phone booth! If you find one, maybe convince some friends to engage in the age old tradition of phonebooth stuffing! That’s where you see how many people you can fit into a phone booth. Wikipedia tells me that on March 20, 1959, students in South Africa set a world record when 25 of them were able to squeeze at least the greater portions of their bodies into a standard phone booth.
See if you can beat that!
And if you can’t, maybe just take a selfie and report back here where you found your phone booth. I enjoy hearing about pay phones out in the wild!
There are many things in this world that once were common but that are now so rare I tend to stop and take note when I see them. Tail fins on cars, people who still play compact discs, a punch bowl at a party, and all around good manners make me look again. Another thing that tops my list is the humble payphone.
The payphone originated in the late nineteenth century, giving folks the opportunity to prepay for a call. This was handy if you were traveling or if you didn’t have a home phone and just needed to make a call. Young people may be skeptical when I say this but there was a time that a phone was a luxury rather than a right or necessity.
When I was a college student back in the nineties, I carried quarters as well as a prepaid phone card to call home from a pay phone. This went on until the day I got my first mobile phone – a giant black corded monstrosity inside a leather bag that was attached to an external antenna via about six feet of cord. It was bulky and not meant to be portable. Instead, it lived in my car, more or less turning my little Chevy Cavalier into a rolling phone booth.
As technology improved, that bag phone was traded in for a flip phone and then one with a pull out keyboard (that one was the bomb) before eventually embracing the iPhone, a decision I’ve been repeatedly told was an upgrade. I’m still not convinced about that given how intrusive it can feel.
I liked using the payphone because the upfront cost lent a certain kind of urgency to a phone call. If I had just a handful of quarters, I had an excuse to keep the conversation short. Not to mention, being tied to the wall in a public place where others might need the phone encouraged some brevity as well.
Unfortunately, the rise of mobile phone usage in America has nearly driven our faithful payphones into extinction.
Almost.
I remember when the City of New York got rid of the last of its public pay phones back in 2022. That was a small news story but one I saw as a profound marker in our society. That city was once home to more than 30,000 payphones attached to poles, inside public buildings and in phone booths across the city.
I have just one question. Where does Clark Kent change now? I mean, how does he transform into Superman on his way to fight crime and save the day if there are no phone booths?
Yet, you still see them around. You see them more in small rural towns where cell service is spotty or where the economy is such that not everyone can afford a cell phone. You also see them in neighborhoods near county courthouses and jails. After all, if you’re released from jail with only the possessions you took in, it’s possible you don’t have a working cell phone to call for a ride.
This little number pictured above is located in the vestibule of the Frisch’s Big Boy in Chillicothe, Ohio. It’s a bizarre place for a payphone given the lack of privacy and the constant risk of being smacked with an opening door.
At least it’s there.
Personally, I haven’t touched a payphone probably since college but they always make me feel nostalgic, not just for my own youth but for eras before me. When I was a young reporter at a regional newspaper, the rookie desk in the newsroom was next to a man named Roy Cross. He was elderly at the time and cherry picked the best feature stories. He had earned that right after spending a career chasing stories during the golden age of journalism.
Roy regaled me with tales of covering crime and courts as a young reporter. If there was no time to come back to the paper to write up a story after a long day sitting through a criminal court trial, calling in the story for someone to transcribe was the only choice. So he and competitors would jockey for courthouse phones and public payphones to do just that. The idea of Roy as a young man with a reporter’s notebook in hand, writing his story as he spoke it into the phone was basically the coolest thing I had ever heard. It was like something out of a black and white film like “It Happened One Night” or “His Girl Friday.”
Sentimental, maybe, but most people couldn’t do it and I loved the idea. By the way, Roy would absolutely have been played by Clark Gable.
So seeing a payphone isn’t really about the phone. It’s about the memories and about nostalgia for a time I’ll never know. And let’s be honest. Given how much I despise talking on the phone most of the time, it’s absolutely about those shorter calls!
The Athena Grand movie theater in Athens, Ohio has a pay phone in the lobby. That’s right- a real and actual working pay phone where you can drop in coins and call someone.
There’s even a sign that tells people that it works.
One of my fun quirks is that I always photograph pay phones and phone booths whenever I see them. There are a surprising number of them out in the world but not nearly as many as we probably need. After all, not everyone in this world has a cell phone and there are still places that don’t have great cell service.
Sadly, my cell phone has robbed me of the ability to memorize phone numbers. I can recite my childhood phone number and the office number of my first job but have almost no recollection of anything acquired since my iPhone stores all that information for me.
If you stop by Harper’s Old General Store across the road from Seneca Rocks, take note of some items on the front porch. Here you’ll see these two old fuel pumps. In the background, you’ll find a pay phone.
I was taken with the patina and shapes of the pumps atop the wide plank wood floor. The pay phone plays a practical role for the folks camping and traveling through the area. Cell service is poor so a pay phone may be their only access to the outside world.
Lots of people laugh at the ridiculousness of pay phones but they are a lifeline for many folks – either because there’s no cell service or because they simply don’t have a cell phone at all. After all, there are still people out there who don’t have cell phones. Still, they’re so uncommon I never hesitate to photograph them when I’m out and about.
So take a look when you’re at Harper’s and be sure to go in for a snack and a souvenir. Support those small businesses when you can!
This photo got a lot of play on my Facebook page last weekend.
Phone booths and pay phones used to be commonplace in cities and rural communities across the country. Today they’re such a rare sight I usually stop and take note when one presents itself. I actually wrote about pay phones on another occasion.
This little beauty is close to an old Masonic Hall turned community building and a cute little dairy bar in Frankfort, Ohio.
It’s another of those things that I photograph largely because they are being lost to time and progress. I wrote a little about that recently and about making pictures that depict all of the scene and not just the pretty part.
This photo got a lot of play on my Facebook page last weekend.