The New York Telephone Company (NYTel) was organized in 1896, taking over the
New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
operations of the
American Bell Telephone Company
The Bell Telephone Company, a common law joint stock company, was organized in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 9, 1877, by Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who also helped organize a sister company – the New Englan ...
.
Predecessor companies
The Telephone Company of New York was formed under franchise in 1876. The principals were
Charles A. Cheever and
Hilborne Roosevelt
Hilborne Lewis Roosevelt (December 21, 1849 – December 30, 1886) was a pioneering organ builder, telecommunication engineer, and a member of the Roosevelt family.
Life
Roosevelt was born in New York City to Silas Weir Roosevelt, a son of Cornel ...
. Its purpose was to rent telephone instruments to users, who were expected to provide wires to connect them, for example from factory to office. Such connections already existed for private telegraphs, and the new invention promised to save the cost of hiring a private telegraph operator. Manufacturers of steel wire for the
Brooklyn Bridge
The Brooklyn Bridge is a hybrid cable-stayed/ suspension bridge in New York City, spanning the East River between the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Opened on May 24, 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was the first fixed crossing of the East River ...
then under construction were especially prominent among the customers under this scheme, using their own product.
Western Union
The Western Union Company is an American multinational financial services company, headquartered in Denver, Colorado.
Founded in 1851 as the New York and Mississippi Valley Printing Telegraph Company in Rochester, New York, the company chang ...
subsidiaries, including Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph, Gold and Stock Telegraph, and American Speaking Telephone, based their New York and San Francisco operations on the
telephone exchange
A telephone exchange, telephone switch, or central office is a telecommunications system used in the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or in large enterprises. It interconnects telephone subscriber lines or virtual circuits of digital syst ...
principle and thus were larger and more advanced than the local Bell operations. Under the November 1879 settlement of the
Elisha Gray
Elisha Gray (August 2, 1835 – January 21, 1901) was an American electrical engineer who co-founded the Western Electric Manufacturing Company. Gray is best known for his development of a telephone prototype in 1876 in Highland Park, Illinois. ...
patent infringement lawsuit, Western Union handed over its telephone operations to National Bell Telephone, which then renamed itself American Bell Telephone. The merged local company was called the Metropolitan Telephone and Telegraph Company. In 1896 the operations of Metropolitan Telephone and Telegraph Company and the Westchester Telephone Company (which served northern suburban areas, including parts of then-
Westchester County
Westchester County is located in the U.S. state of New York. It is the seventh most populous county in the State of New York and the most populous north of New York City. According to the 2020 United States Census, the county had a population o ...
which subsequently were incorporated into New York City as the
borough
A borough is an administrative division in various English-speaking countries. In principle, the term ''borough'' designates a self-governing walled town, although in practice, official use of the term varies widely.
History
In the Middle Ag ...
of
the Bronx
The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...
) were consolidated under the name of the New York Telephone Company.
![NY-NJ-TT 81 Wil jeh](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/NY-NJ-TT_81_Wil_jeh.JPG)
The New York and New Jersey Telephone Company, a Bell licensee serving Long Island and Staten Island, was broken up and its New York properties merged with the New York company as the City and Suburban Telephone Company in 1897.
American Telephone and Telegraph
AT&T Corporation, originally the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is the subsidiary of AT&T Inc. that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agen ...
(AT&T) eventually acquired a controlling interest and restored the New York Telephone name.
Infrastructure
![Verizon, 228 East 56th Street](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/84/Verizon%2C_228_East_56th_Street.jpg)
The company went underground in the 1920s, creating expensive new
outside plant
In telecommunication, the term outside plant has the following meanings:
*In civilian telecommunications, outside plant refers to all of the physical cabling and supporting infrastructure (such as conduit, cabinets, tower or poles), and any associ ...
that fixed its geometry for the century to come. New cable ducts brought more reliable service to customers. They converged at approximately twenty wire centers, which were connected by larger
trunk cable ducts running along the East and West Sides of Manhattan. The locations were one to two miles apart, close to concentrations of office workers while avoiding high prices for land. At each wire center a new
central office arose to house
telephone switchboard
A telephone switchboard was a device used to connect circuits of telephones to establish telephone calls between users or other switchboards, throughout the 20th century. The switchboard was an essential component of a manual telephone exchange, ...
s,
panel switch
The Panel Machine Switching System is a type of automatic telephone exchange for urban service that was used in the Bell System in the United States for seven decades. The first semi-mechanical types of this design were installed in 1915 in Newark, ...
es and other
inside plant In telecommunication, the term inside plant has the following meanings:
*All the cabling and equipment installed in a telecommunications facility, including the main distribution frame (MDF) and all the equipment extending inward therefrom, such as ...
, along with technicians, clerks, operators, and other workers. The largest of these was also the
corporate headquarters
Corporate headquarters is the part of a corporate structure that deals with important tasks such as strategic planning, corporate communications, taxes, law, books of record, marketing, finance, human resources, and information technology. Corpor ...
, at 140 West Street on the Lower West Side, about a half mile from AT&T headquarters at
195 Broadway
195 Broadway, also known as the Telephone Building, Telegraph Building, or Western Union Building, is an early skyscraper on Broadway in the Financial District of Manhattan, New York City. It was the longtime headquarters of AT&T as well as Wes ...
.
The
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
and
Bronx
The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...
parts of the underground system are owned by the
Empire City Subway Company subsidiary. Similar construction, on a smaller scale, went on in Brooklyn,
Buffalo and other urban areas. Suburban and rural service also expanded, mostly with aerial cable or open wire plant and
Strowger switch
The Strowger switch is the first commercially successful electromechanical stepping switch telephone exchange system. It was developed by the Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange Company founded in 1891 by Almon Brown Strowger. Because of ...
es.
Service crisis
Forecasters in the late 1960s underestimated demand, resulting in a shortage of capacity in Manhattan, NYTel's principal profit area. Customers had to wait weeks for a new line or a repair, and sometimes minutes for dial tone on an existing line. The new
1ESS Stored Program Control exchanges had software bugs that kept them from carrying full load. Deferred maintenance choked
main distribution frame
In telephony, a main distribution frame (MDF or main frame) is a signal distribution frame for connecting equipment (inside plant) to cables and subscriber carrier equipment (outside plant).
Overview
The MDF is a termination point within the l ...
s (MDFs) with dead jumpers. There were not enough cables to office buildings, nor enough underground conduits to install them. Morale was poor in all levels and departments, and strikes were frequent.
The company's response was to hire and train thousands of new employees and to purchase new equipment on which they could work. Underground construction took years, but emergency installation of Anaconda Carrier
pair gain
In telephony, pair gain is the transmitting of multiple POTS signals over the twisted pairs traditionally used for a single traditional subscriber line in telephone systems. Pair gain has the effect of creating additional subscriber lines. This ...
systems normally used in rural areas expanded service while construction was in progress.
Bell Labs
Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984),
then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996)
and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007),
is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...
added processing power to their new systems and fixed the software bugs. A new wire center at
1095 Avenue of the Americas and 42nd Street relieved four others in
Midtown Manhattan
Midtown Manhattan is the central portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan and serves as the city's primary central business district. Midtown is home to some of the city's most prominent buildings, including the Empire State Buildin ...
of part of their load, as well as providing the company with a new headquarters for the next several decades. The crisis subsided during the 1970s, decreasing the number of workers needed to facilitate the development of the industry.
![East Village 20191129 - 06 - Second btwn 12 & 13](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/East_Village_20191129_-_06_-_Second_btwn_12_%26_13.jpg)
On February 27, 1975, a
fire in the telephone building at 204 Second Avenue and East 13th Street destroyed the MDF, disconnecting tens of thousands of customers, and obsolescent switching equipment was destroyed or damaged by smoke. Located at the south end of the East Side trunk cable duct under
Second Avenue, this building connects many circuits to
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
which were disrupted. A Bell System mobilization dealt with the crisis, including replacing the destroyed MDF. An obsolete and recently retired exchange at the West 18th Street office, not yet melted down for scrap metal, was temporarily resurrected to serve thousands of E13 customers though existing crosstown cables. The damaged
Number One Crossbar Switching System The Number One Crossbar Switching System (1XB), was the primary technology for urban telephone exchanges served by the Bell System in the mid-20th century. Its switch fabric used the electromechanical crossbar switch to implement the topology of ...
(1XB switch) was cleaned, and a
Number One Electronic Switching System
The Number One Electronic Switching System (1ESS) was the first large-scale stored program control (SPC) telephone exchange or electronic switching system in the Bell System. It was manufactured by Western Electric and first placed into servi ...
(1ESS switch) that had been destined for the 104 Broad Street exchange was diverted. This was the largest loss of telephone service from fire in United States history until the
September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...
.
Wholly owned subsidiary
New York Telephone was an AT&T subsidiary until the
AT&T breakup
The breakup of the Bell System was mandated on January 8, 1982, by an agreed consent decree providing that AT&T Corporation would, as had been initially proposed by AT&T, relinquish control of the Bell Operating Companies, which had provided loc ...
effective January 1, 1984. At that time, New York Telephone, along with the
New England Telephone & Telegraph Company, became part of a
Regional Bell operating company
The Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOC) are the result of ''United States v. AT&T'', the U.S. Department of Justice antitrust suit against the former American Telephone & Telegraph Company (later known as AT&T Corp.). On January 8, 1982 ...
named
NYNEX
NYNEX Corporation was an American telephone company that served five states of New England (Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont) as well as most of the state of New York from January 1, 1984 to August 14, 1997.
History ...
. The company was referred to as "New York Telephone, a NYNEX Company" before being called simply "NYNEX" starting on January 1, 1994. On August 15, 1997, NYNEX was acquired by
Bell Atlantic
Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in ...
, who kept the Bell Atlantic name. On June 30, 2000, Bell Atlantic acquired
GTE
GTE Corporation, formerly General Telephone & Electronics Corporation (1955–1982), was the largest independent telephone company in the United States during the days of the Bell System. The company operated from 1926, with roots tracing furth ...
to form the current
Verizon Communications
Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas i ...
, with the corporate headquarters remaining the same 1095 Avenue of the Americas location until 2006 when HQ returned to
140 West Street.
New York Telephone provides local telephone service throughout the state of
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
New York may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' ...
, with the exception of the areas served by the
Rochester Telephone Company and other smaller independent local exchange companies. The company also serves the
Greenwich
Greenwich ( , ,) is a town in south-east London, England, within the ceremonial county of Greater London. It is situated east-southeast of Charing Cross.
Greenwich is notable for its maritime history and for giving its name to the Greenwich ...
and
Byram exchanges in
Connecticut
Connecticut () is the southernmost state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. Its cap ...
. (The rest of Connecticut is served by
SNET.)
New York Telephone, then operating under the Bell Atlantic brand, was the first Bell telephone company to win approval to provide long-distance service within its operating territory in December 1999, following the
Telecommunications Act of 1996
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 is a United States federal law enacted by the 104th United States Congress on January 3, 1996, and signed into law on February 8, 1996, by President Bill Clinton. It primarily amended Chapter 5 of Title 47 of t ...
.
21st century
The
September 11, 2001, attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerc ...
destroyed the small
telephone exchange
A telephone exchange, telephone switch, or central office is a telecommunications system used in the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or in large enterprises. It interconnects telephone subscriber lines or virtual circuits of digital syst ...
inside the
World Trade Center
World Trade Centers are sites recognized by the World Trade Centers Association.
World Trade Center may refer to:
Buildings
* List of World Trade Centers
* World Trade Center (2001–present), a building complex that includes five skyscrapers, a ...
, that served the center, and damaged the company's largest exchange building, the
Verizon Building
The Verizon Building (also known as 100 Barclay, the Barclay–Vesey Building, and the New York Telephone Company Building) is an office and residential building at 140 West Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City. The 32-story building was d ...
at 140 West Street, across Vesey Street. The destruction included cables under Vesey Street as well as
inside plant In telecommunication, the term inside plant has the following meanings:
*All the cabling and equipment installed in a telecommunications facility, including the main distribution frame (MDF) and all the equipment extending inward therefrom, such as ...
damaged when
I-beam
An I-beam, also known as H-beam (for universal column, UC), w-beam (for "wide flange"), universal beam (UB), rolled steel joist (RSJ), or double-T (especially in Polish language, Polish, Bulgarian language, Bulgarian, Spanish language, Spanish ...
s and steel from the towers ran through the building. Service was disrupted to approximately 300,000 business and consumer voice circuits, 3,600,000 data circuits (including the
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed c ...
), and 10
cell tower
A cell site, cell tower, or cellular base station is a cellular-enabled mobile device site where antennas and electronic communications equipment are placed (typically on a radio mast, tower, or other raised structure) to create a cell, or adj ...
s.
Police Department headquarters lost telephone service, but the nearby NYTel building at
375 Pearl Street had its own small exchange which only lost part of its connections to the rest of the network. Madison Street was closed and cables run out the lower windows of the two buildings and along the pavement to bring immediate service to a few hundred police telephone lines.
Workers from throughout the country, including 3,000 Verizon employees plus non-Verizon employees, helped restore service, allowing the network to carry 230,000,000 calls during the first week following the attacks. During the restoration efforts, trunk cables were run out windows and down the side of the building, flowing through streets closed to traffic, until they found an undamaged
manhole
A manhole (utility hole, maintenance hole, or sewer hole) is an opening to a confined space such as a shaft, utility vault, or large vessel. Manholes are often used as an access point for an underground public utility, allowing inspection, m ...
for them to enter.
DMS-100
The DMS-100 is a member of the Digital Multiplex System (DMS) product line of telephone exchange switches manufactured by Northern Telecom. Designed during the 1970s and released in 1979, it can control 100,000 telephone lines.
The purpose of th ...
and other exchange equipment was damaged and replaced the following year. The building was completely renovated restoring it to its former glory as corporate headquarters. In a ceremony on December 8, 2005, Verizon moved its corporate headquarters from 1095 Avenue of the Americas to 140 West St.
In later years the company sold parts of several exchange buildings,
and returned its headquarters to 1095
Avenue of the Americas
Sixth Avenue – also known as Avenue of the Americas, although this name is seldom used by New Yorkers, p.24 – is a major thoroughfare in New York City's borough of Manhattan, on which traffic runs northbound, or "uptown". It is commercial ...
.
See also
*
AT&T Corporation
AT&T Corporation, originally the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is the subsidiary of AT&T Inc. that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agen ...
*
Bell System
The Bell System was a system of telecommunication companies, led by the Bell Telephone Company and later by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), that dominated the telephone services industry in North America for over one hundr ...
*
NYNEX
NYNEX Corporation was an American telephone company that served five states of New England (Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont) as well as most of the state of New York from January 1, 1984 to August 14, 1997.
History ...
*
Verizon New England
Verizon New England, Inc. is a Bell Operating Company that serves most of Massachusetts and all of Rhode Island. It was formerly New England Telephone and Telegraph Company, more commonly known as New England Telephone, which for seven decades ...
*
Western Electric
The Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering and manufacturing company officially founded in 1869. A wholly owned subsidiary of American Telephone & Telegraph for most of its lifespan, it served as the primary equipment ma ...
References
External links
Official Website
{{Authority control
1896 establishments in New York City
American companies established in 1896
Telecommunications companies established in 1896
1984 mergers and acquisitions
Companies based in New York City
Verizon Communications
Telecommunications companies of the United States
Bell System
Communications in New York (state)