Last Phone Booths of Manhattan

UPDATE, May, 2011: Manhattan Phone Booths Revisited

Also, see Aaron Skirboll's "Enjoy the Silence", at The Morning News.

It sounds like a trick question: "How many phone booths are there in Manhattan?" A savvy respondant might answer that there are none, because most old style phone booths with accordian doors and copies of the white pages have been replaced by door-less payphone enclosures (if not removed altogether).

In fact, as shown on this page, there are four remaining outdoor, free-standing phone booths in Manhattan. They are all on West End Avenue. One is at 66th Street. The others are at 90th, 100th, and 101st Streets. Additionally, a lonely, unused phone booth sits like a museum piece on Yankee Pier, in Buttermilk Channel, off of New York's Governors Island (link).

There are numerous other phone booths throughout New York, but they are indoors. If you have a jones for a genuine phone booth that is indoors, try the main branch of the New York Public Library on 42nd Street and 5th Avenue, or the underground maze of Rockefeller Center. In particular, underneath the UBS Warburg Building you will find a long row of distinctive old style phone booths UPDATE: NO YOU WON'T. THOSE BOOTHS WERE REMOVED IN LATE 2009, including copies of both the white pages and the yellow pages.

The booth at the center of the movie "Phone Booth" does not exist. If a phone booth ever did grace that corner of 53rd Street (as shown in the film) it was replaced years ago by a less distinctive payphone enclosure. Payphone enclosures are comparatively cheap to maintain, but offer no protection from the elements or privacy in which to conduct business.

I fail to understand the nostalgia around outdoor phone booths. If you want to know why I feel this way, step into the booths at the Vince Lombardi Service Area off the New Jersey Turnpike. It has been some time since I stepped in to one of these booths, but when I did the stench was so foul I had to step right back out.