Phone Booths

Visitors to the Fair who wanted to call home needed to use pay telephones in those pre-cellular days. The Bell System introduced a number of unusual technologies at the Fair.

Serpentine phone booth

In addition to the new Touch Tone dialing system, the phone booths used this serpentine shape instead of the more traditional glass and aluminum boxes of the time. They were only used at the Fair. One booth still survives and was recently donated to the Queens Museum. A fundraiser has been started to find the money needed to restore it. (CD #6 Set 27 #31)


Family Phone Booth

Here's another style of phone booth only used at the Fair. Dubbed "Family Phone Booths", they offered everyone in the booth a chance to share in the conversation through the use of a speakerphone system. (CD #60 Set 251 #21)



Miscellaneous Photos