I have a small advertising card that was at the bottom of a box of donated eyeglass supplies several years ago, for Brown and Burpee Optometrists in New England somewhere. At the bottom: “Telephone 694.”
WYoming-1, and then FAirmount-1. For a while, we even had a party line.
Ours was Addison, i.e. 23, in one part of far North Dallas…it was always 233 or 239. There was also 661, but darned if I can figure out what that was.
I can still hear the jingle now. “Hudson 3-2700”
A carpet company, I think. In Chicago.
That seems unusual, unless you moved to a different city some distance away. HUnter and IVanhoe are identical to the switching machinery, since they both produce 48.
EXbrook (Venice/Santa Monica); OSborne (Lawndale); FRontier (South Bay generally). The last number morphed into a 374 prefix.
My family’s apartment - BRunswick 8
The house we moved to - AVenue 3
WEbster took over a number of 4-digit exchanges when it added a fifth. We were WHitney and our neighbor was WAlnut.
I Wrote an article for the Hermosa Beach (California) Historical Society’s newsletter about FRontier and learned from old newspapers that the name originally proposed was FROlic. The locals objected as it was “too frivolous” and they wanted a serious, respectable name. So they got FRontier.
Two others I recall from the South Bay area were DAvis and FAculty.
Ours was NOrthfield 8 - but I don’t know of any geographical feature around our area called Northfield. An adjacent area had NOrth 9. I guess giving different names and numbers was supposed to reduce the chance of a wrong number? I dunno.
But even back then, I preferred to remember phone numbers as numbers, which is why I don’t recall what the 825 exchange translated to.
I was born in 1970. I barely remember “ME1” being used in place of “631,” in a phone book we had around 1975 or so. I recall my mother telling me it stood for…hmm…“Medford,” perhaps? I think that was it.
At first it was HAmilton 6, then IVanhoe 8, same house, same last 4 digits. This was in Baltimore, MD.
This raises an interesting question: I wonder what the first instance was of a business or other entity using four (or even seven) letters to spell out its phone number as an ostensibly easier way for people to remember it.
I don’t think I’m making this up, but I could swear that I saw some phones that had a Z all by itself associated with the 0. Though why this would be done is a mystery, as no phone number back then, to my knowledge, had a zero in its first three digits.
In fact, seems to me that area codes didn’t have a zero as a middle digit until they’d been around for quite a while.
Before the introduction of “800” numbers, you called the Operator “0” and asked for a ZEnith number. For example, to reach the California Highway Patrol, you called the Operator and asked for “ZEnith 1-2000.” These were special toll-free numbers.
I remember LOcust, TEnnyson & LEhigh
Ours was SOuthfield1-xxxx
::Carol Kane from The Princess Bride:: Liar, liar! “Q” (and “Z”) isn’t on the telephone dial. [“Daddy, what’s a ‘telephone dial’”? “Go ask your mother.”]
You must be a mere slip of a girl to not remember this. I can’t un-remember the last line of that jingle. (Early Jim Henson work!!)
825 was “Valley” (Hunt Valley?). My grandparents lived in Towson.
BEverly 3 (south side of Chicago) There was also BEverly 8, PRospect 9, BEverly 9 and HIlltop 5.
I was a big Encyclopedia Brown fan when I was a kid, and I bought some of those old books for my son. One of the stories we read no longer makes any sense to kids.
The story involved a pair of prize pigs who had been kidnapped. The owner of one of the pigs claimed that the kidnapper left a note with a ransom demand, and a phone number to call: the number was something like “ZA5-9812.”
Back in 1970, we kids were supposed to realize “Hey, there’s no Q or Z on a telephone dial” and then figure out the ransom note was a fake. Ergo, the pig owner had staged the kidnapping himself.
But in the pushbutton era, all 26 letters are covered, and no kid would ever be able to solve the mystery.
^ Similarly: Batman comic book from 45+years ago. An artist is murdered but not before signing his last painting “-Q,” which B-man deduces is David DIAL.
FLagstone 4-XXXX. This is at least 52 years ago - we moved to where my parents still live when I was six.
Regards,
Shodan
Clifford (“25–”, with the next digit invariably “4” or “7”) I remember that there was a paper circle with that in the center of the telephone dial plate.
Aside from the area code getting changed on her, my mother still has the same telephone number that it did when she first moved into the house over half a century ago.