Mine growing up in Queens (we continued to use the Exchange letters in the 70s) was FIeldstone 30113. My grandmother’s, also in Queens, was LI45571, but I have no idea what the LI stands for. EJsGirl’s link suggests LIberty, but says that was outdated by 1961; maybe that’s why I can only remember the letters but not the entire exchange.
I think I remember my mom mentioning that ours, (the 52 exchange in west hamilton) was JAckson. This would probably just at the edge of anybody at all caring about named exchanges, in the early 80s.
ETA: Hi, Tim - where was your jackson?
And what kind of names were exchanges like 577 used for I wonder?
I grew up in LA County, and our exchange was first LYcoming, then later it was NAtional.
MErrimac on the NW side of Chicago.
Another jingle from the past for you Chicagoans - MOhawk 4-4100
Most of the numbers were BAldwin 3 in my neighborhood However, although that was the town I grew up in, our number was a FReeport 9 from the next town over. I never really understood that as a child and now just assume they ran out of BAldwin numbers.
The first phone number I remember: 2682M. No exchange. Then it was converted to BEacon 4-0708. This is in Richmond, CA in the fifties. The only reason I remember this is because it was drilled in my head, in case I got lost. As stated above.
I don’t remember a time before the current phone system, but my dad told me that in his youth their exchange was FUlton 5. He and my mom both had party lines growing up, and the phone would ring in a distinct way that would tell you if the call was for you or not.
When dinosaurs walked the Earth, I tell ya… 
Growing up in Madison, Wisconsin, my exchange was ACademy 2. My dad still lives in the house and still has the same number.
It was a little confusing to me for quite a while though. I knew our number was Academy 2, xxxx. But other kids in my rural neighborhood had Acey 2, xxxx. And furthermore, they said that was MY exchange too. Well I didn’t really know what an exchange was but I couldn’t understand why my number could be both Academy AND Acey.
Turns out of course that Acey is simply AC. :smack:
I think I was probably 10 years old before I figured that out.*
*While somewhat embarrassing, it’s not as bad as not figuring out until I started driving that the “Beardy Bow” that I walked to nearly every summer day as a kid for an orange push-up or a Bun candy bar, was actually the “Beer Depot”.
In Northwest IN, we just dialed 5 numbers. Later (around maybe late 70’s early 80’s) they added a 2 digit prefix.
Mine was in Arlington, VA (area code: 703)
I grew up in a small town, so the exchange was SOuthold 5 (now 765). The town near us was GReenport 7 (477).
SUnflower. Up until the early 1970s, Yuma only had two prefixes, 782 and 783, and we could dial any number in town with just five digits. (Also, we were on a party line.)
Arizona only had one area code, 602.
MOhawk here, too. It was a small town, you didn’t have to dial the “66” for making calls in town until maybe the '70s, just the 5 digit number.
TWinbrook-4-9225.
Ah, the good old days. Now my parents and sisters in SE Ohio have to dial a 1-330-xxx-xxxx just to call next door.
By sheer coincidence, the phone numbers at UCLA all used to be 825-???, and 825 happens to be UCL as well, but I’ve been told it wasn’t the result of anything deliberate. I think UCLA must still own all the 825 numbers, but probably needs additional ones too.
Gladstones is certainly still there, and it’s very good if you stay away from anything on the menu that says “blackened”.
I was born after the switch, but I found an old school notebook of my aunt’s that had her phone number with the exchange written out. 393-xxxx turned out to have derived from EXpress 3-xxxx. And since most local numbers started with 39, I guess that was the exchange for the whole area.
EXpress? What an odd name for an exchange. But then, I guess the good ones ran out pretty fast.
Here in London the old exchange names are still used internally by the phone company for record purposes so when planning the installation of new equipment or a private circuit one has to be able to recognise that L/HIL [Hillside] is North Finchley and L/ENT [Enterprise] is New Southgate and L/BLA, [Blackwall] L/EAS [East] and L/CNW [Canary Wharf] are all units within Poplar exchange.
Born in Los Angeles, in the Baldwin Hills area, ours was AXminister. No idea what the hell that means.
And I consider my hometown where Gladstone’s is located. GLadstone-4 is a prefix in Pacific Palisades, CA. When I lived there the two prefixes were 454 and 459.
Now, of course, several others have been added. But the people with 454 and 459 numbers hang on to them. Telephone prestige, I tell ya…
Chicago. BRunswick, AVenue.
Yes. Remember this?
“Mo-hawk 4, 4 one hun-dred
C-E-T, for tel-e-vi-sion”.