Prairie Grove Airlight Outdoor Telephone Booth
   HOME

TheInfoList



Click Here for Items Related To - Prairie Grove Airlight Outdoor Telephone Booth
OR:
Prairie Grove Airlight Outdoor Telephone Booth on:   [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Amazon]

The Prairie Grove Airlight Outdoor Telephone Booth is a telephone booth installed at the southwest corner of East Douglas and Parker Streets in Prairie Grove,
Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the Osage ...
, United States. It is an early example of the Airlight, the first American mass-produced weather-resistant metal telephone booth, which made possible widespread installation of outdoor
payphone A payphone (alternative spelling: pay phone) is typically a coin-operated public telephone, often located in a telephone booth or in high-traffic outdoor areas, with prepayment by inserting money (usually coins) or by billing a credit or debit ...
s. In 2015, it became the first phone booth on the
National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...
.


Description and history

The phone booth is located on the east side of Prairie Grove, opposite the entrance to
Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park The Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park is an Arkansas state park located in Prairie Grove. It commemorates the Battle of Prairie Grove, fought December 7, 1862, during the American Civil War. The battle secured northwestern Arkansas for t ...
on U.S. Highway 62, and in front of the Colonial Motel. It is a structure of aluminum with a satin finish, and glass window walls, with a bifold door that folds inward, topped by a red panel marked "TELEPHONE". It rests on a small concrete pad, with the door facing the highway, and measures about in height, and in width and depth at its base. It is slightly larger at the top, with an aluminum roof that projects slightly beyond the walls. The interior of the booth houses an aluminum shelf, above which the original telephone is mounted. A swiveling directory holder is mounted in the shelf, and there is a fluorescent light fixture mounted in the ceiling. It is an Airlight Outdoor Telephone Booth, a product introduced by American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) in 1954 as a way to install public telephones in outdoor locations. Previously, telephones, even publicly accessible pay phones, had generally only been available indoors. This particular telephone booth was installed about 1960 by the local Prairie Grove Telephone Company, to serve visitors to the nearby motel and state park. It is the only surviving booth of the company's original four. In 2014, the phone booth was damaged by an
SUV A sport utility vehicle (SUV) is a car classification that combines elements of road-going passenger cars with features from off-road vehicles, such as raised ground clearance and four-wheel drive. There is no commonly agreed-upon definitio ...
, after which the company repaired it, replacing a few of its glass panes and straightening bent metal parts. Ralph Wilcox, director of historic preservation programs for Arkansas, believes it is one of only two telephone booths of this type in the state with a working phone. It was added to the NRHP on November 9, 2015.


See also

*
Mojave phone booth ''Mojave Phone Booth'' is an independently produced 2006 film directed by John Putch. The film is based on a Mojave phone booth, real phone booth in the Mojave Desert that once accepted incoming calls, but has since been removed. The film is compos ...
* National Register of Historic Places listings in Washington County, Arkansas * * *


References


External links


National Register of Historic Places Registration Form
{{National Register of Historic Places 1960 establishments in Arkansas Aluminum objects AT&T Infrastructure completed in 1960 National Register of Historic Places in Washington County, Arkansas Public phones Telecommunications infrastructure on the National Register of Historic Places