If it were November 26 and we were in the 1890s, it would be The Village Postmaster, strangely described in this Brooklyn Daily Eagle ad “as full of good, healthy fun as an egg is of meat.”
The Grand Opera House used to be between Fulton and Livingston Streets in downtown Brooklyn. Check out that great old 4-digit phone number:
Tags: " Brooklyn Grand Opera House, "The Village Postmaster, Alice Ives, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Jerome Eddy, old 4-digit phone numbers
Ephemeral New York 
March 11, 2009 at 9:27 pm |
Those phone numbers like “1233 Main” lasted until dial phones happened in 1920. But if that ad was really from the 1890s, it’s the earliest I’ve seen with the exchange name after the line number. That sort of thing was actually done in the directories around 1910, but the directories before 1905 or so put the exchange before the number. It just goes to show that, when you had to talk to an operator, it didn’t much matter whether you said “1233 Main” or “Main 1233.”
(See “prealpha.html” on my site for some of this history.
March 11, 2009 at 11:50 pm |
I gave that page wrong: it’s not prealpha.html, it’s /nyc/predial.html
March 11, 2009 at 11:52 pm |
Click on my name in THIS comment to get the homepage. I typed THAT worng earlier!