''Spirit of Communication'' is the formal name for the statue by Evelyn Beatrice Longman originally called ''Genius of Telegraphy''. The statue has been the symbol of

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 ...

(and also the former

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 ...

) since their commission was completed in 1916. It is also known informally as the ''Golden Boy'' statue and formerly as ''Genius of Electricity''. Commissioned for

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 ...

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 ...

, the sculpture has followed AT&T to other sites in

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 * '' ...

and

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delawa ...

over the years. In 2009, the statue was relocated to AT&T's current corporate headquarters in downtown

Dallas, Texas Dallas () is the third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 million people. It is the largest city in and seat of Dallas County ...

, U.S. As of 2022, the statue is located outside in the AT&T Discovery District in

Downtown Dallas Downtown Dallas is the central business district (CBD) of Dallas, Texas, United States, located in the geographic center of the city. It is the second-largest business district in the state of Texas. The area termed "Downtown" has traditionally ...

History

Commissioned in 1914, it was crafted by Evelyn Beatrice Longman. The work was completed in 1916 and hoisted to the roof of AT&T Corporate Headquarters at

in the

Financial District A financial district is usually a central area in a city where financial services firms such as banks, insurance companies and other related finance corporations have their head offices. In major cities, financial districts are often home to s ...

Lower Manhattan Lower Manhattan (also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York) is the southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business, culture, and government in New York City, which is the most populated city in the United States with ...

. The statue's design by Evelyn Beatrice Longman was selected as the winner of a competition, similar to the 1917

Bell Telephone Memorial The Bell Memorial (also known as the Bell Monument or Telephone Monument) is a memorial designed by Walter Seymour Allward to commemorate the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell at the Bell Homestead National Historic Site, in Bra ...

. It became New York City's second-largest sculpture, after the Statue of Liberty. The statue's original name as commissioned under the aegis of AT&T's president Theodore N. Vail was ''Genius of Telegraphy''.Gray, Christopher
AT&T Headquarters at 195 Broadway; A Bellwether Building Where History Was Made
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', April 23, 2000. By that time, AT&T had spun off its telegraphy component,

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 cha ...

, and the work was renamed to ''Genius of Electricity''. In the 1928,1938, and 1941 editions of the training course ''Principles of Electricity applied to Telephone and Telegraph Work'', it was referred to as ''Spirit of Electricity''. Spirit_of_Communication_AT%26T_logo_1914

The statue weighs more than 14.5 tonnes (16 short tons) and is tall, with wings that extend 2.7 metres (9 ft) from its body. It is cast in bronze and covered with more than 12,500 pieces of gold leaf. Sometime in the mid-1930s, AT&T changed the name of the statue (and the image) to ''The Spirit of Communication''. It continued to stand atop the

building until the early 1980s. In 1984, AT&T moved to a new postmodern headquarters building at

550 Madison Avenue 550 Madison Avenue (formerly known as the Sony Tower, Sony Plaza, and AT&T Building) is a postmodern skyscraper at Madison Avenue between 55th and 56th Streets in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City. Designed by Philip Johnson ...

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 Buildi ...

, designed by Philip Johnson. On Johnson's suggestion, the statue was relocated to the foyer of the new location.

Relocation to New Jersey

1984 marked the end of the

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 ...

. The New York City headquarters building was sold to

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

in 1992 and the company relocated its headquarters to

32 Avenue of the Americas 32 Avenue of the Americas (also known as the AT&T Long Lines Building, AT&T Building, or 32 Sixth Avenue) is a 27-story, telecommunications building in the Tribeca neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. Completed in 1932, it was one o ...

(which had no room for the statue) and many operating functions across the Hudson River and about forty miles west to a wooded campus purchased nine years previously in

Basking Ridge, New Jersey Basking Ridge is an unincorporated community located within Bernards Township in the Somerset Hills region of Somerset County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 Census, the population for the ZIP Code Tabulation Area (ZCTA) 07920 w ...

. The statue was installed in front of the main entrance to the new building in 1992. In 2002, AT&T sold its Basking Ridge property and moved eight miles (13 km) down the road to Bedminster Township bringing the statue. Those facilities had previously been the headquarters of the

AT&T Long Lines AT&T Communications, Inc., was a division of the AT&T Corporation that, through 23 subsidiaries, provided interexchange carrier and long-distance telephone services. History AT&T Long Lines The American Telephone & Telegraph Long Lines ...

division and home to the company's national network operations center.

Present owners

In November 2005, SBC (once a wholly owned subsidiary of the

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 ...

—a ''

Baby Bell 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, 19 ...

'') acquired AT&T. In a move designed to capitalize on the national and global name of its former parent,

San Antonio, Texas ("Cradle of Freedom") , image_map = , mapsize = 220px , map_caption = Interactive map of San Antonio , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = United States , subdivision_type1= State , subdivision_name1 = Texas , subdivision_ ...

-based SBC renamed itself AT&T Inc. In 2009, the new AT&T removed the statue from the Bedminster Township, New Jersey location and later installed it in the lobby of its new headquarters at the Whitacre Tower in

. The statue was moved yet again in 2019 from the Whitacre Tower to AT&T's Discovery District in Downtown Dallas.

References

External links

Golden Boy History and VideosImage of 1941 telephone directory
{{coord missing, Texas Bronze sculptures in Texas Outdoor sculptures in New Jersey Outdoor sculptures in Manhattan Outdoor sculptures in Texas AT&T Buildings and structures in Dallas 1914 sculptures Gold sculptures in the United States Statues in Texas Nude sculptures in the United States Personifications

History

Relocation to New Jersey

Present owners

See also

References

External links