Anybody have phone booths?

[Greg G.]

I visited a friend today that I haven't seen for a few months, before I started collecting vintage phones.  She showed me her s/o's vintage phone booth, with a working pay phone.  It's a wooden one from 1941 and used to be at the LA airport.  He has it hooked up and working, including the phone, although you don't need coins to use it, but she said he puts in coins anyway just for kicks.  The light in the booth comes on when you shut the door.  Pretty cool!  Next time I'm there I'll try to get some pictures.

[mienaichizu]

I'd like also to have a phone booth and a working payphone in my house

[HobieSport]

A 1941 booth from the L. A. Airport?  Imagine what that booth has seen and the calls made!

I've looked into phone booths just out of curiosity, but will never own one.  There is usually one on Ebay, but of course they are local pick up only, and expensive.

To me the icon of phone booths is the classic British telephone box, and many of the original 1936 models were auctioned off in the late 1980s.

The cell phone of course pretty much made the booths obsolete.  They removed the booths in our little north calif town in the late 1990s as soon as we got cell reception.

There is a company in England that makes lightweight modular replicas and will ship all over the world:

http://www.thephoneybox.com/

Anyway, I find them fascinating, and it would be neat to have one, but it's out of my league.

[rp2813]

About a year ago the local Craigs List classifieds had a vintage phone booth for sale (or it might have even been free).  This was the old wooden type with the peaked 4-sided roof.  It was weathered and the green paint was gone but structurally it was still all there.  By the time I answered the ad it was already too late.

Ralph

[bingster]

There are a few phone booths that I lust after.  First and foremost is a red British phone box, but like Matt sez, they're just too expensive.  My fantasy phone booth would be a British police call box (like the Tardis).  I'd also like to have an indoor Western Electric booth in quarter-sawn oak.   They're really nice.  Western also made an indoor, free-standing, room-like phone booth designed to hold vanity sets.  They were like little tiny houses designed to be put in large open interiors, like train stations or hotel lobbies, I suppose.  They were pretty awesome.

[McHeath]

We must all be on some similar wavelength, I was just reading up on Phone Booths today and then come and find that the forum has this thread.  Weirdness.

Anyway the Red British booth was be my first choice, but they are super expensive.  I even found that company that Hobiesport listed that makes a plastic version of it, also expensive. 

Here in my neck of the woods there is a phone booth at a gas station not too far away, it still has "Pacific Telephone" in the reader card up top and is in pretty good shape.  Up at Sequoia at Grant's Grove there is a phone booth or two, I usually step into them at some point on a visit to change into my alter ego, SuperNerdMan™

[Dan/Panther]

I would love to have one, just too pricey.
D/P

[AET]

I'm trying to think where it was, I beleive it was Pabst Mansion I was at that had an indoor 'phone booth area' built into the house, it was really something, with the original phone in it from when the mansion was built in 1892. 

[Greg G.]

Went for a visit again yesterday, here's the pics.  The sign he got from ebay, can't remember where he found the vintage phone book, but it has his family listed in it.

[HobieSport]

This company in Maryland makes mahogany replicas of the British phone booth for interior use.  They sell them to restaurants that require that customers use them if they want to speak on a cell phone.  Rather civilized yet a bit ironic, considering that the cell phone sort of "killed" the phone booth.

http://tinyurl.com/dk7cw3

[Stephen Furley]

There are a few phone booths that I lust after.  First and foremost is a red British phone box, but like Matt sez, they're just too expensive.

I can tell you something else about them that might put you off the idea, the weight.  In the 'auction' picture above the larger model with the perforated crown for ventilation is a K2; the much more common slightly smaller one with the embossed crown, and a slit for ventilation, is a K6.  They are made of cast iron, and the K6 weighs over a ton, I'm not sure if that includes the glass or not.  A K2 is about 1.5 tons.

There are very few K2s still in use, they were never very common, and even the K6s are not common now; basically the ones that are left are preserved.  Even many of the modern stainless steel kiosks are being removed now.

If you want to buy one these people sell them:

http://www.unicornkiosks.com/red-telephone-kiosks.html

I would hate to think what it would cost to ship one over there!

This is just a couple of miles or so South of me; I see their yard from the train near the next station down the line from mine.

The instructions for erecting a K6 are here:

http://web.ukonline.co.uk/freshwater/k6inst.htm

[HobieSport]

Yes, I did forget to mention the slight issue of weight, being cast iron and all...

British phone booths remind me of a couple of my favorite movies: "Local Hero" and "Waking Ned Devine", where the phone booths themselves play small but important rolls in the plots.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085859/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166396/

[bwanna]

i am lucky enough to be the proud owner of this beauty. got her from an old phone guy who got it out of the old small town drugstore. i also bought another from him, that had been in an old hotel in the same town in northern mich. i sold the second one to my brother. got both booths & a pile of phones & parts for 1300$

i'm not sure of the vintage. was last used in 1977. needs a good cleaning & a coat of varnish. oh yeah, & a phone.

[bwanna]

here's the other pics

[Dennis Markham]

Cool phone booth Donna.  Do you plan to refurbish it??