New York says goodbye to Manhattan payphones

 

This Sunday morning in Manhattan, New York, they removed what was the last phone booth in the entire city.

The Bell System logo (a blue bell in a circle) was still visible on the phone, and it had survived the era of cell phones. It was located at the crossroads between Seventh Avenue and 50th Street, in midtown Manhattan. .

The booth actually belonged to Titan, a company that in 2010 bought the remaining 1,300 phone booths from Verizon — the largest telephone provider in New York — to use as advertising media, but all of them disappeared over the years.

change of era

Were they no longer needed? No one making calls? The booths had gradually fallen into disuse because since 2015, the New York City Council began installing state-of-the-art kiosks that allow New Yorkers to have free Wi-Fi in a nearby radius, charge cell phone batteries and make calls at no cost. .

There are now 2,000 of these new kiosks and they are credited with the ultimate decline of booths.

What was it like saying goodbye?

  

Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine was not swayed by nostalgia, saying the phone booths "made us all suffer equally."

He recalled the numerous telephones without tone, the booths that swallowed coins and coins without giving a signal or the long queues of users waiting to access a free telephone, according to the abc7ny network.

But for those nostalgic, there are still four “vintage” aesthetic places on West End Avenue, used mostly by tourists or mere “instagramers” who take pictures inside those relics.