Father Pitt

Tag: Telephone Exchanges

  • Telephone Exchange, Allegheny Center

    “Bell Telephone” inscription
    Telephone exchange

    Not only is this elegant palace of switching one of the few buildings left in Allegheny Center from before the great urban renewal of the 1960s, but it also preserves a memory of the extinct street layout of old Allegheny.

    Street signs: East Diamond Street, East Montgomery Avenue

    The architect was probably James Windrim of Philadelphia, who did most of the work for Bell of Pennsylvania in the first quarter of the twentieth century. His mission was to make these necessary industrial buildings ornaments to their neighborhoods, so that the telephone company would not face too much opposition. In the nineteenth century, it had been usual to put street signs on the corners of buildings; it was already a bit old-fashioned by the time this exchange was built, but several of the old Bell Telephone exchanges have them, and we suppose it was another way of making them seem like good neighborhood citizens. These streets no longer exist; the quarter-loop drive that turns around this corner is known as Montgomery Place.

    Montgomery Avenue façade
    Telephone exchange
    Telephone exchange
    Doorway
    Doorway
    Bracket
    Telephone exchange from North Commons
    Sony Alpha 3000; Canon PowerShot SX20 IS.
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  • Telephone Building, Allentown

    Telephone Building

    The Hilltop neighborhoods outgrew this telephone exchange, and a new Art Deco palace of telephony was built up the street. But the building remained standing, and has been converted to apartments.

    James Windrim, the Philadelphia architect who did all of Bell of Pennsylvania’s work for some years in the early twentieth century, supervised alterations and additions to this building in 1923 or 1924,1 but he may not have been the original architect.

    Entrance to the Telephone Building
    Telephone Building
    Telephone Building
    Kodak EasyShare Z981.
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  • Telephone Exchange, East Liberty

    Telephone exchange

    Inside the building was a mass of wires and electrical equipment and operators’ switchboards. But the Bell Telephone Company insisted that the outside of every telephone exchange must be an ornament to the neighborhood. They were all Renaissance palaces like this until the 1930s, and it is likely that they all came from the same architectural office—namely, the office of James Windrim, who also designed the 1923 Bell Telephone Building downtown. After Windrim, Press C. Dowler took over as the Bell company’s court architect, and the style changed to refined Art Deco.

    Bell Telephone exchange entrance
    Spiral ornament
    Cornice
    Telephone exchange, East Liberty
    Canon PowerShot SX150 IS; Sony Alpha 3000 with 7Artisans 35mm f/1.4 lens.
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  • Telephone Exchange, Coraopolis

    Telephone exchange

    A simple but pleasingly proportioned telephone exchange that was almost certainly designed by Press C. Dowler, who got all the telephone company’s local business in the Art Deco era.

    Ornament
    Entrance
    Nikon COOLPIX P100.

  • Art Deco Telephone Exchange in Carnegie

    Telephone exchange in Carnegie

    Press C. Dowler was almost certainly the architect of this classic Art Deco telephone exchange, since he designed most of the buildings for Bell Telephone in our area during the Art Deco era.

    The blankness of the first floor is probably original. As much of the switching equipment as possible was on the ground floor, because copper was expensive, and anything that shortened the distance that had to be cabled saved a lot of money.

    Frieze

    The polychrome frieze is an unexpected flash of color on what is otherwise a monochrome building that makes its decorative statements with cleverly patterned brick, a few stone accents, and small terra-cotta ornaments.

    Entrance decoration
    Brickwork
    Terra cotta
    Street names

    It used to be usual for corner buildings to carry the names of the streets in lieu of street signs. It was already old-fashioned when this building went up, but who could resist those elegant Art Deco letters?

  • Telephone Exchange, Squirrel Hill

    Telephone exchange in Squirrel Hill

    A particularly grand example of the Renaissance-palace school of telephone exchanges. Father Pitt believes that all our Renaissance-palace telephone exchanges were probably done by the same architect, and some day he hopes to find out who it was. (Update: It was probably James Windrim, a well-known Philadelphian who had the Bell Telephone franchise in Pennsylvania for many years. He designed the 1923 Bell Telephone Building downtown, and is known to have worked on other telephone exchanges in our area.)

    Lunette and inscription
    Corner view of the telephone exchange

  • Bell Telephone Exchange, Sharpsburg

    Bell Telephone exchange in Sharpsburg

    As Father Pitt has remarked before, telephone exchanges were designed to be ornaments to their neighborhoods, and the Renaissance-palace style was one of the most popular forms for them. This one is on Main Street in Sharpsburg, and it preserves its Renaissance dignity under the ownership of the successor to the Bell System.

    Entrance
    Pediment
    Bell System
    Parapet
    Corner view

    This blank wall on the western end of the building shows two different colors of bricks, suggesting that the building was originally one storey, with the second storey added later. That would explain the cornice at the first-floor level.

    Map.

  • Bell Telephone Exchange, Allentown

    Bell Telephone exchange, Allentown, Pittsburgh

    A particularly fine Art Deco design. Neighborhood telephone exchanges were put up all over the city, and the telephone company, which had all the money in the world, always made them ornaments to their neighborhoods. This one still belongs to the successor of the Bell Telephone Company.

    Addendum: The architect was almost certainly Press C. Dowler. According to the Pennsylvania Historic Resource Survey Form for the Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania Western Headquarters Building, “Between 1935 and 1955, Press C. Dowler designed in excess of 60 buildings for Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania in the Pittsburgh region.”

    Entrance
    Decorative relief
    Another relief

  • Bell Telephone Building, Oakland

    Bell Telephone Building, Neville Avenue

    When this dignified Renaissance palace on Neville Avenue was built, there were telephone exchanges like this all over the city, each one stuffed with operators directing calls from here to there. They were built to be ornaments to their neighborhoods rather than mere excrescences of technology. These days we dial numbers directly, but this building still belongs to the successor of the Bell Telephone Company.