A Midtown bar that still has a wood phone booth

Beer has been flowing at P.J. Clarke’s on Third Avenue and 55th Street since Chester Arthur was president.

And while the place looks spiffier than it has in recent years, it’s still one of those old-school saloons that kept its Gilded Age decor, like stained glass, amber lights, and a pressed tin ceiling.

There’s another old New York relic P.J. Clarke’s appears to have held onto: the bar’s wooden phone booth.

Way back in the dinosaur era of payphones, every public place had one: a phone booth with a hinged door and small stool a person would tuck themselves into to make their call out of earshot.

While the phone itself and the seat are no longer in the booth at P.J.’s, the booth itself is still there  beside the end of the bar—only now it’s used to store glasses and napkins.

Not convinced that this casket-like space was a phone booth? Check out how similar its shape is to these, spotted at the Park Avenue Armory in 2010, and this one, at Bill’s on 54th Street, ID’d in 2015.

Found: two more vintage wood phone booths

They’re rare, but a few are still out there: the lovely wood booths New Yorkers used to slip into (closing the hinged door behind them for privacy and not to disturb anyone) to make a phone call.

Old bars are a good place to look for them. The Ear Inn, on Spring Street, is one of the city’s oldest taverns—and right inside the front door is a beautiful vintage booth (above) with a stool, overhead fan, and a stand that supports an ATM machine.

In better shape but also lacking a phone is this wooden booth, located on the second floor of the magnificent headquarters of the General Society of Mechanics & Tradesmen, at 20 West 44th Street.

The door is also hinged, and there’s a little stand where the phone once sat.

A label inside actually notes that the booth was patented in 1919 and lists a phone booth distributor in Brooklyn called the Turner Armour Corporation.

The phone is lovely, but the building itself is a marvel of wonderfully preserved wooden book cases, light fixtures, interior detailing, and a soaring staircase out of the movies.