Spotted on an unremarkable building on West 47th Street in the Diamond District: an old-school New York City phone exchange, in this case “MU.”
What does it stand for? Murray Hill, of course, the neighborhood where the real estate company that put up this plaque is based.
It’s getting harder to find these two-letter exchanges, which were replaced by numerals in the early 1960s. But they’re out there—especially in the boroughs outside Manhattan.
The traditional two-letter phone number prefix was officially abandoned in the 1960s.
From time to time, as readers of this site know, they sometimes reveal themselves in faded ads and randomly found signs, like these two below.
I’m not exactly sure what an asbestos curtain was, but American Stage Equipment sold them from an East Harlem office South Bronx office.
The CY exchange is new to me, but according to this guide, it stands for cypress, which places it in the Bronx. The sign hangs in an antiques shop in Brooklyn.
ST could have stood for stagg or sterling in Brooklyn, stillwell in Queens, or Stuyvesant in Manhattan. It was found on a Flatiron building, so Stuyvesant is a good bet.
It’s a little worrisome that so many elevator alarm bells list a phone number with a pre-1960s exchange. Will someone really answer the call?
Exeter was a Long Island City exchange—from a warehouse building in Chelsea.
I couldn’t find any listing for Super B Drug, but luckily this colorful sign survives on Canal Street near Broadway. The CA exchange—CAnal, of course.
Ephemeral New York 