The wooden phone booths inside a private Midtown clubhouse

This week has turned out to be themed around vintage phone booths on Ephemeral New York. First came four glass beauties still extant along West End Avenue, the last remaining outdoor booths in New York City.

Next up is another old-school telephone discovery: a row of wooden phone booths—with restored wood chairs, small tables, accordion doors, and amazingly, actual phones—along a wall inside the Harvard Club, at 27 West 44th Street.

Did these booths once have pay phones? I’m not sure; perhaps part of being a club member meant the house picked up the charges. Members today, of course, would only duck into one to hold a private cell phone conversation.

These old wood phone booths are a rare find in the contemporary city, but discovering and documenting them allows us to time travel back to a much different New York City.

Until the 1980s and 1990s, every hotel and public building, as well as most restaurants, bars, and drugstores, had at least one public telephone booth along with a bulky paper phone directory for customers, clients, and locals who didn’t have a phone of their own. (And many people didn’t, often by choice. Imagine!)

The Harvard Club itself has its own historical cred. Designed by Charles McKim and opened in 1894, the clubhouse featured a “grill room,” offices, a library, and a couple of card and billiard rooms. McKim, a Harvard man and club member who took no fee for his work, modeled the Georgian-style brick and limestone exterior to resemble those in Harvard Yard, according to the Harvard Club website.

The club was expanded and renovated over the years, sometimes to create more space but also to keep up with social changes.

In 1973, the ladies’ entrance to the club was removed and women were admitted as full members. Though some Harvard graduate programs admitted women, Harvard and its sister school, Radcliffe College, didn’t merge their admissions until 1975.

[Top and second photos: Susan Schwartz; third photo: Wikipedia]

A wooden phone booth in an old Flatiron bar

Few bars have as much old-school atmosphere as the circa-1892 Old Town Bar on 18th Street next to Park Avenue South.

The long mahogany and marble bar is original, as are the tin ceilings. And the neon sign hanging outside gives off a warm New York glow.

The best part is inside: a wooden phone booth! It’s way in the back on the ground floor, partly obscured by a table. In the darkened room, it’s hard to even notice it.

The phone is gone, of course. Yet there’s a folding door for privacy, a wooden counter, and a sign on top referencing the Bell Telephone Company.

More of these remnants of pre-cell phone New York can be found here.

Wooden phone booths hiding on 57th Street

The Art Students League has been offering art classes and exhibits in a landmark building on West 57th Street between Broadway and Seventh Avenue since 1892.

Of course, these twin phone booths just inside the entrance probably aren’t quite that old.

But the details—wooden stools, glass doors, and fan switches (hey, it probably got hot quickly in a wooden booth, especially if you were having a tempestuous argument with the door shut tight)—have got to be midcentury.

The phones themselves? Hmm, maybe 1990? The phone books to the left look pretty ancient as well.

More charming relics from the pre-cell phone era can be found here.