Making a Connection

For some of us, it’s hard to remember a time when we didn’t have portable communication devices that fit in our pockets — when a phone call required access to a wired line. I recently came across a photograph with a phone booth in it and I struggled to remember the last time I had seen one in person. That led me on a search for more of these now obsolete structures in the Prints & Photographs Division collections.

The man in this photograph taken by photographer Anthony Angel, also known as Angelo Rizzuto, seems to be settled in for a long conversation, perhaps more comfortable sitting on a stool outside the phone booth than standing up inside.

The people in this photograph taken at LaGuardia airport in 1980 by Bernard Gotfryd – and the large number of available phones – provide a reminder of how reliant people used to be on payphones to make a connection, especially when traveling.

This phone booth in the Alabama State Capitol is dwarfed by the grand staircase above.

A phone booth is situated to the right of this wooden structure located in Park County, Wyoming, photographed as part of a Historic American Buildings Survey in 1993. My eyes were also drawn to the small blurry figure at left (could that be a shaggy dog walking away from the photographer?).

The caption for this photograph indicates public payphones had already become a rarity by 2012.

This 2022 photo shows creative use of an old phone booth that features a mannequin version of Superman, who famously used these structures to transform himself from Clark Kent into a superhero in some stories.

Whether or not you are nostalgic for a time when making a call in public required some effort, we hope these images provide a reminder of times past, even if that time doesn’t feel so long ago to some of us!

Learn More:

• Enjoy this Flickr album featuring additional telephone-related images from the collections: Give Me a Ring.
• Explore more phone-related imagery from the Carol M. Highsmith Archive.