1935 Philadelphia directory

[shadow67]

Picked this up and thought it might be interesting to post. The rates and instructions are a good read.

[shadow67]

One more.

[rdelius]

At that time,
Philadelphia still had 2 telephone companies. Bell and Keystone

[jsowers]

I love the 3L4N phone numbers. Only a handful of cities had those. New York, Boston and Philadelphia and maybe a few more. PENnypacker and RITtenhouse are my favorites. Large compound words make unusual central office names, and notice that they were regional and had a business office in whatever part of town they served. I enlarged the page below. They kept mostly the same names and shortened them to 2L5N after WWII in Philadelphia, which I think was the last city to convert to that format. Their having two different phone systems, as Robbie pointed out, didn't make things any easier. Ads had to list two separate phone numbers until they had just one system.

[shadow67]

Did you notice it cost $45 for a 3 min call to Cape Town? Makes one realize what a luxury long distance phone calls were at that time... I was not aware of the 2 telephone systems. Good info, thanks.

[rdelius]

This is an example of a Keystone dial as found on an American Electric candlestick telephone.

[19and41]

Did you notice it cost $45 for a 3 min call to Cape Town? Makes one realize what a luxury long distance phone calls were at that time... I was not aware of the 2 telephone systems. Good info, thanks.

Adjusted for inflation, that is $827.75 in today's dollars.