Archinect - News

New York City's last remaining public payphone has been removed

2022-05-24T17:32:00-04:00

Located at Seventh Avenue and 49th Street, the removal of the payphone kiosk marks the end of an era. It was the last of its kind in operation in New York, following a sweep of the city’s 8,178 active public payphones starting in 2015. Replacing the former payphone sites have been LinkNYC kiosks that were first introduced by tech company consortium City Bridge in 2014 following a competition launched by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg to reimagine the payphone. A more modern take on the long-standing payphones, LinkNYC kiosks offer Wi-Fi, USB charging ports, and the ability to make free nationwide calls.

There still remain some private payphones on public property, however, along with four permanent, full-length booths all located on the Upper West Side. The “last” payphones removed yesterday will not be scrapped though. Instead, they are heading to the Museum of the City of New York as part of its new exhibit Analog City: NYC BC (Before Computers).

NYC Reinvent Payphones Design Challenge Entry by FXFOWLE

2013-03-11T19:00:00-04:00

In our last post, we published the six finalists and category winners of New York City's ambitious Reinvent Payphones Design Challenge. Here is now the award winner in the "Creativity" category, the concept "NYC Loop" by New York architects FXFOWLE, in more detail.

Previously: Six Finalists of NYC’s Reinvent Payphones Design Challenge

Six Finalists of NYC’s Reinvent Payphones Design Challenge

2013-03-11T17:27:00-04:00

New York City leaders have announced the winning prototypes from the Reinvent Payphones Design Challenge which launched last December. [...] The competition had invited architects, students, urban designers, planners, technologists, and policy experts to create physical and virtual prototypes that imagine the future of NYC’s approximately 11,000 public pay telephones.