PEnnsylvania 6-5000 is a

telephone number A telephone number is a sequence of digits assigned to a landline telephone subscriber station connected to a telephone line or to a wireless electronic telephony device, such as a radio telephone or a mobile telephone, or to other devices f ...

in New York City, written in the 2L+5N (two letters, five numbers) format that was common from about 1930 into the 1960s. The number is best known from the 1940 hit song " Pennsylvania 6-5000", a

swing jazz Swing music is a style of jazz that developed in the United States during the late 1920s and early 1930s. It became nationally popular from the mid-1930s. The name derived from its emphasis on the off-beat, or nominally weaker beat. Swing bands ...

and

pop standard Traditional pop (also known as classic pop and pre-rock and roll pop) is Western pop music that generally pre-dates the advent of rock and roll in the mid-1950s. The most popular and enduring songs from this era of music are known as pop standards ...

recorded by the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Its owner, the

Hotel Pennsylvania The Hotel Pennsylvania was a historic hotel at 401 Seventh Avenue (15 Penn Plaza) in Manhattan, across the street from Pennsylvania Station and Madison Square Garden in New York City. Opened in 1919, it was once the largest hotel in the world. ...

, claims it to be the oldest continuously used telephone number in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

. The hotel opened on January 25, 1919, but the exact age of the telephone number and the veracity of the hotel's claim are unknown. For many years, callers to (212) 736-5000 were greeted with the hotel's phone system recorded

greeting Greeting is an act of communication in which human beings intentionally make their presence known to each other, to show attention to, and to suggest a type of relationship (usually cordial) or social status (formal or informal) between indiv ...

that includes a portion of the song. The hotel closed permanently in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and is being torn down to make way for a tower at 15 Penn Plaza. The tower's developer, Steven Roth, said in 2022 that the new building would retain the phone number (212) 736-5000, although he did not specify how the phone number would be reassigned. The named ''Pennsylvania'' exchange served the area around

Penn Station Pennsylvania Station is a name applied by the Pennsylvania Railroad to several of its grand passenger terminals. Pennsylvania Station or Penn Station may also refer to Current train stations * Baltimore Penn Station * Pennsylvania Station (Cinc ...

in New York. The two letters, ''PE'', stand for the numbers 7 and 3, making the phone number 736-5000, not including the later

area code 212 Area is the quantity that expresses the extent of a Region (mathematics), region on the plane (geometry), plane or on a curved surface (mathematics), surface. The area of a plane region or ''plane area'' refers to the area of a shape or planar ...

for

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 ...

Background

At the time of Glenn Miller's popular network radio broadcasts, most local telephone calls in large cities were dialed directly, while intercity calls required the operator. There were no area codes. The length of local numbers varied widely; four or five digits was more than enough for a small city with a single central office, while separate central offices served individual neighborhoods of larger cities. In large cities, each central office had one or more

telephone exchange name A telephone exchange name or central office name was a distinguishing and memorable name assigned to a central office. It identified the switching system to which a telephone was connected, and facilitated the connection of telephone calls betwee ...

s. In the 2L+5N system, used only in large cities, a seven-digit local number was dialed as the first two letters of the exchange name (PE for "PEnnsylvania", the exchange serving the area around Penn Station) and five digits. The

telephone numbering plan A telephone numbering plan is a type of numbering scheme used in telecommunication to assign telephone numbers to subscriber telephones or other telephony endpoints. Telephone numbers are the addresses of participants in a telephone network, re ...

s implemented by telephone companies did not follow any standard practice until the

North American Numbering Plan The North American Numbering Plan (NANP) is a telephone numbering plan for twenty-five regions in twenty countries, primarily in North America and the Caribbean. This group is historically known as World Zone 1 and has the international calling ...

was created by

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile te ...

in 1947. The first automated dial exchanges in the Bell System were deployed in 1919. When seven-digit telephone numbers were first assigned in New York in 1920, the three-letter four-number (3L-4N) system had represented the number in the format ''PENnsylvania 5000''. Similar systems were used in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

, and

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

. By 1930, the 3L-4N system was changed to a 2L–5N system, using two letters and five digits, and ''PEN-5000'' became ''PE6-5000'', much like the ''BUTterfield'' central office became

BUtterfield 8 ''BUtterfield 8'' is a 1960 American drama film directed by Daniel Mann, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Laurence Harvey. Taylor won her first Academy Award for her performance in a leading role. The film was based on a 1935 novel of the same na ...

. The North American Numbering Plan introduced area codes for the eventually continent-wide implementation of

direct distance dialing Direct distance dialing (DDD) is a telecommunication service feature in North America by which a caller may, without operator assistance, call any other user outside the local calling area. Direct dialing by subscribers typically requires extra d ...

in 1951 in Englewood, New Jersey. Many calls from outside the city were placed through an operator, by requesting "long distance, New York City, Pennsylvania six, five-thousand". The long distance operator would either plug into a labeled "New York City, 2L+5N" trunk and dial PE6-5000 or ask the New York City inbound operator to ring the number. The initial area code assignment gave ''PEnnsylvania 6-5000''

's area code, as '' (212) PE6-5000''. In 1969, the PE6 central office was the first in

to be converted from a

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, ...

to a

1ESS switch 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 ...

, temporarily making it a significant part of New York Telephone's service crisis. In 1999, area code 646 was overlaid on 212; in 2003, eleven-digit local calling was imposed on all of New York City, including calls within the same area code. Letters from the original named exchange prefixes are occasionally spotted on old signage in the city, but are increasingly rare.

In popular culture

Many

big band A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s ...

names played in the Hotel Pennsylvania's

Café Rouge Café Rouge is a French-styled restaurant chain, with 30 sites across the United Kingdom. Café Rouge is part of a bigger restaurant network owned by Casual Dining Group. History Café Rouge was founded by Roger Myers and Karen Jones, in ...

, including the Glenn Miller Orchestra. The number inspired the

pun A pun, also known as paronomasia, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophoni ...

title ''Transylvania 6-5000'', used separately as titles for a 1963 Bugs Bunny cartoon, a 1985 full-length live-action film, and a sketch by

Wayne and Shuster Wayne and Shuster were a Canadian comedy duo formed by Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster. They were active professionally from the early 1940s until the late 1980s, first as a live act, then on radio, then as part of ''The Army Show'' that enter ...

. Another parody was included in the

Weird Al Yankovic Weird derives from the Anglo-Saxon word Wyrd, meaning fate or destiny. In modern English it has acquired the meaning of “strange or uncanny”. It may also refer to: Places * Weird Lake, a lake in Minnesota, U.S. People *"Weird Al" Yankovic ...

song, The Plumbing Song, where the plumber’s number is “Roto-Rooter 6-5000”. Season 1, Episode 4 of the show ''ALF'' is titled "Pennsylvania 6-5000".

References

{{Reflist

External links

Telephone exchange names A telephone exchange name or central office name was a distinguishing and memorable name assigned to a central office. It identified the switching system to which a telephone was connected, and facilitated the connection of telephone calls betwee ...

Telephone numbers in the United States