Once a common sight along highways across America, telephone booths are becoming so rare that one is being nominated for the National Register of Historic Places.
The 55-year-old Prairie Grove Airlight outdoor telephone booth was among 16 properties selected for nomination Wednesday by the State Review Board of the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program.
Arkansas is apparently the first state in the country to nominate a telephone booth, said Ralph Wilcox, National Register/survey coordinator for the Historic Preservation Program.
"We know that phone booths are a fast-vanishing resource, and at the time, we thought the one in Prairie Grove was the last of its type in Arkansas," Wilcox said of the booth, which contains a working pay phone. "We have since located another in Bluffton, Yell County."
Wilcox, who wrote the nomination, said there may be more phone booths around Arkansas that he doesn't know about.
Patrick Andrus, a historian with the National Register, said this is the first time that he knows of that a telephone booth has been nominated.
"I've worked at the National Register for 35 years, and I don't know of a state ever nominating a telephone booth," said Andrus. "I'm sure they will prepare a well-documented nomination. We'll carefully look at it and see what they say about it, why is it important."
Andrus said the National Register lists five types of properties: buildings, districts, sites, structures and large objects (such as outdoor fountains). Generally, properties must be at least 50 years old to be listed on the National Register, which is administered by the National Park Service.
Wilcox said the National Register should receive the nomination sometime this week. He'll know in May if the phone booth will be listed.
Telephone booths were part of American culture throughout the 20th century. One was Superman's changing room in a 1941 comic strip, and one was a refuge from killer birds in Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 movie The Birds. Telephone booths provided a brief respite from the turmoil outside, a public place of semi-privacy where wires magically connected people to the wider world.
The phone booth is being nominated under two criteria: as an "excellent example" of these aluminum-and-glass phone booths that were developed for Bell Telephone System in 1954 and for its "importance in the communications history of Prairie Grove."
The Airlight phone booths were used for decades. The booths have a red panel at the top of all four sides, with the word "TELEPHONE" in white letters. The telephone is in one corner of the booth. The booth has a "bi-fold door."
"Its aluminum and glass construction was durable enough to stand up to the elements and the amount of glass along with the louvers on the sides allowed its namesake elements -- air and light -- to flood the booth," according to the nomination form. The Airlight booths also contain fluorescent overhead lights.
"Like a lighthouse on the highway," according to a 1959 Bell Telephone advertisement touting its visibility at night.
Early in the 20th century, telephone booths were made of wood and were intended for indoor use.
"Outdoor telephone booths began to appear in the 1940s during World War II at military bases, and they allowed military personnel to make calls to families back home," according to the nomination form. "However, it was during the 1950s that they became prevalent on the American landscape."
According to a 1955 Bell Telephone advertisement, outdoor telephone booths would "supplement the hundreds of thousands of telephone booths in buildings, stores, hotels, gas stations, airports, railroad stations and bus terminals."
A 1954 Bell ad described the modern aluminum-and-glass booths as inviting: "Any time you see one of these new Airlight Outdoor Telephone Booths, you're likely to want to go right in and make a call. For they are mighty attractive and comfortable. They are well-lighted, day and night. Tip-up directories are in easy reach. There's an ample shelf for packages and handbags. The Airlight Outdoor Booths are never closed. They are available for service 24 hours a day, every day in the year."
According to the nomination form, there were 2.6 million pay phones in the United States by 1996.
Since then, cellular phones have become common and -- while pay phones still exist in some places -- telephone booths have become rare.
The nominated phone booth is a tourist attraction on U.S. 62 across from Prairie Grove Battlefield State Park. People often stop at the booth to take pictures.
In June, a motorist driving a 2003 Chevrolet Tahoe dozed off and ran into the phone booth, knocking it from its concrete foundation in front of the Colonial Motel.
David Parks, president of Prairie Grove Telephone Co., said he thought about not replacing the phone booth, which generates about $2 in change about every six months.
But there was such a public outcry on the city's Facebook page that he decided to fix it.
"This was the only 'working' pay phone booth that I knew still existed," Secretary of State Mark Martin, who is from Prairie Grove, wrote on the Facebook page last year. "It was one of the many many small things that makes Prairie Grove special to us."
The phone booth was repaired and reinstalled in August.
The campaign to save the phone booth got so much attention that it ended up in a New York Times article July 4. The article by Dan Barry was titled "A Town Won't Let Go of a Coin-Drop Line to the Past."
Parks said the phone booth is the last one operated by the Prairie Grove Telephone Co. The company still has 15 pay phones, down from 42 a decade ago, but only one is in a booth.
Guy Matthews, who owns the Colonial Motel, said the phone booth was there when he bought the motel in 1976. Matthews witnessed the accident in June and said the Tahoe driver was uninjured.
Matthews said he wouldn't mind having a National Register site right in front of his motel. It might bring in more tourists.
Metro on 04/05/2015