Telephone in every room Sign

[.....]

I picked up this sign last month with some other Telephone related items.

Looking for some information on it. I'm thinking that possibly hung in a Bell store.
I have the hanging bracket that came with it, but I don't think they are a matched set.
The sign is 23 1/2" W X 15 1/2" H and  double sided. The bracket is 21" Long.
The sign does have some light scratching on it. Any ideas on the value of this sign?
I have never seen that style of a telephone sign before, that's why I'm asking.

[LarryInMichigan]

I don't recall seeing a sign like this before, but my guess is that this is not a telco sign but rather something that might have hung outside a motel to advertise that all of the guest rooms were equipped with telephones (but perhaps not televisions, air conditioning, or Magic Fingers beds).

Larry

[FABphones]

Before I read Larry's reply I was thinking the same thing. Hotel/Motel.

Larry - Magic Fingers beds?

[LarryInMichigan]

Larry - Magic Fingers beds?

It was a tacky feature in many dumpy motels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Houghtaling.

Larry

[FABphones]

It was a tacky feature in many dumpy motels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Houghtaling.

Larry

Yikes. Suddenly I feel so innocent. I need to pay more attention (or not) when watching old movies. 

[Pourme]

~

"Tacky?.....I think not

America voted with their quarters! 

[Owain]

"Tacky?.....I think not

A little sticky after much use, perhaps?

[Owain]

a motel to advertise that all of the guest rooms were equipped with telephones

And not dial phones, note, just manual ones

[Jim Stettler]

I think the sign is from a show home in a "telephone built home" subdivision. In the 1950's many nicer/exclusive subdivisions had telephone built homes. They would pre-wire a home with a loop of wire all the plates were blanks. You chose where to place the extensions. There was a lot of promo stuff for telephone built homes,.
I lived in one. My house had 1 loop of heavy gauge beige telephone wire looped thru jacks in every room. My buddy 2 blocks away  lived in the show home. It had 8 pair stranded, un-jacketed ran thru-out the house. I hooked up many extensions in both houses.
Jim S.

[jsowers]

The Bell System called their pre-wiring "Telephone Planned Homes" in the 1950s and 60s. Below are some signs from that era. I think the sign in question was from a motel or hotel since it's very generic looking. Most motels and hotels had manual (non-dial) phones in the 1950s and 60s, but some did have expensive dial systems that used special equipment. The 500 W/Y message waiting phone with the neon lamp was used sometimes in hotels and motels, as was the 543 keyset.

The "Telephone Planned Home" signs were used only in housing developments, but Southern Bell did pre-wire many other houses. My aunt's house was done in 1964 and they used standard station wire and ribbed metal conduit instead of pulling a multi-pair wire in and out of each room. It was an older house with plaster walls and high ceilings that was taken back to the stud walls and completely redone upstairs and down. Two black 500 sets were installed downstairs and hard-wired, with four more empty boxes wired throughout the house. I got the fun of putting modular jacks on all that wiring. One of my favorite phone jobs of all time.

[LarryInMichigan]

When I bought my 1958 house back in 1993, the only rooms with phone wiring in them were the kitchen and master bedroom.  I got the pleasure of running wiring to the other bedrooms, living room, dining room, and various other places.  When I was a kid in the 1970s, our 1960 house had phone wiring in the kitchen and the master bedroom, and a jack on the baseboard in front of a closet where there was nowhere to place a phone.  For years, a 1500 and then 2500 sat on the floor preventing the closet door from opening.  Eventually, my mother told me to install jacks all over the house.  The Illinois Bell techs would be annoyed when they would come over and see all sorts of unofficial wiring and jacks.  One of them told me that he would not report us to the phone company (who would add large monthly fees to our bill for the extra extensions), but he was not allowed to leave my wiring connected, so he disconnected it at the terminal block and told me that if I reconnected it after he left, he wouldn't know about it.

Larry