Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Late afternoon on 1st Street


A view this afternoon of Abetta Boiler & Welding Service at 66 First St. between First Avenue and Second Avenue... been here since 1949, and their sign still features an old NYC telephone exchange — GR 3-2390...

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Im older and did not know that was a phone number, very cool.

Bonnie Slotnick said...

GR stands for Gramercy.
Both my home and work phone numbers are YU—Yukon!

Wink2x said...

Those prefixes were called exchanges and GR stood for the Gramercy exchange

Anonymous said...

let me in, and also get a rooster, feel like that would be a nice extra to this already perfect place

djny10003 said...

My phone number starts with OTtendorfer 4.

Anonymous said...

@6:44pm: You're not THAT old, if you don't remember when NYC phone numbers began with letters! My childhood phone number in an outer borough was a "VIrginia" exchange.

Scuba Diva said...

My current landline is a CAnal exchange—and I kept my roommate's 677 number (is that ORegon?) connected when he died—but I used to have a GRamercy number when I lived on St. Mark's.

Pat said...

Those exchanges were associated with specific neighborhoods and had "personalities" that now are just memories. Who can forget Elizabeth Taylor in "Butterfield 8" where BU was the exchange in the high rent Upper East Side neighborhood in that film.