Discovering another vintage two-letter phone exchange on a West Side sign

Ephemeral New York readers know what a kick it is to come upon a faded ad, store sign, or building plaque that features an old New York City two-letter phone exchange—the kind that were officially replaced with numbers in the 1960s.

I’ve seen a few other Abramson Brothers plaques around Manhattan over the years. But this one, on West 52nd Street in Hell’s Kitchen, was new to me.

I concede these plaques look too spiffy to be made in the 1960s. Perhaps they come from the 1970s or 1980s, when generations of New Yorkers who grew up with the two-letter exchanges continued to be charmed by them.

Or maybe this real estate investment firm just likes the idea of a phone number acting as a geographical marker for where a household or business is located.

MU stood for Murray Hill—and 501 Fifth Avenue is on the edge of Murray Hill’s official borders.

An old New York phone exchange on 47th Street

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.

Upper Manhattan phone exchange mysteries

Tropy Washing Machines is a little neighborhood shop on 117th Street between Lexington and Third Avenues.

The sign is sweetly old-timey, but the AT exchange? It probably stood for Atlantic, according to this chart, but it’s a mystery.

Same with the TR exchange on this sign for Alexander Plumbing. The sign comes from an apartment building on Edgecomb Avenue in Harlem.

TRafalger covered parts of Manhattan, TRiangle was the exchange for a section of Brooklyn, and TRemont, of course, part of the Bronx.