New York's last payphone kiosk, removed from Midtown last month, has officially become a museum artifact:
Last month, New York City removed its last payphone kiosk, a relic of an analog age that in 2022 is more of a museum piece than a functional object. So it’s fitting that the phone immediately made its way into the collection of the, where it is now on view in an exhibition celebrating the city’s pre-digital era.
“In terms of New York City history, payphones were an incredibly important for communicating and staying connected in a really fast-paced city of pedestrians and dynamic street life,” MCNY curator Lilly Tuttle told Artnet News. “You were able to make a call on every corner.”In the early 2000s, New York City had around 30,000 payphones, but that number has rapidly dwindled over the past seven years as they’ve been replaced with LinkNYC kiosks.
It was actually thanks to LinkNYC that MCNY was able to acquire the last payphone. The company, which had worked with the museum on some of its on-screen content, reached out to ask if the phone might be a good fit for the collection. The phone was installed last week at the entrance to the exhibition, titled “Analog City: NYC B.C. .”
A Linotype machine on view in “Analog City: NYC B.C. ” at the Museum of the City of New York. Photo courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.starting in the 1870s, to set type for its newspaper pages, one line at a time, melting down the lead metal type after each issue was printed. In something of a ripple effect, the adoption of the typewriter led to the production of paper in standardized sizes that could be used in the machine. That, in turn, made it possible to store paper in a standardized way.