FHK Newsletter
The New York Telephone Building
449 Broadway, Kingston, NY
Research and interviews by Dean Engle
Special thanks to Berenice FitzGerald, Betty Dabney, Dan Reinhard, Susan Hummel, Peg Brown, Pat Finch, and Peter Roberts for their insight and assistance.
In March 1907, the Hudson River Telephone Company invited subscribers to tour their new brick building at Broadway and O’Reilly Street. Over a hundred thousand feet of underground cable converged at the imposing central office, and switchboard operators connected fifteen thousand calls each day. In the subsequent seven decades, several generations of operators, nearly all women, answered and directed calls on 449 Broadway’s second floor.
#2: Anne Boice (left, closest), Rose Gavis (center), Barbara McFarland (right)
A set of ten polaroid photographs from the FHK Archives’ Ed Ford Collection depict New York Telephone Company operators sometime in the late 1970s. The operators, identified with handwritten notes on the reverse of each photo, include Marilyn Lunn, Mary Kimble, Betty Vanderlyn, Agnes Gardner, Audrey Kelse, Anne Boice, Rose Gavis, Helen Reinhard, Alice Dawson, June Marks, Barbara McFarland, and Verna Murphy.
#4: Agnes Gardner (let), Audrey Kelse (right)
Berenice FitzGerald began working for New York Telephone in 1946. As many as twenty operators worked the busiest shifts. Dial service arrived in 1957 and made traditional switchboards obsolete, requiring adaptation and training on new equipment. In the late 1950s, Berenice was promoted to the customer service department and given her own office. She was the first woman assigned a New York Telephone vehicle. “Once,” Berenice remembered, “I was pulled over by a policeman who said he had done so because he had never seen a woman driving a company car.” Berenice noted that secretarial positions, factory labor, retail sales, teaching, and hospital work were the primary jobs available to Kingston women in the 1950s.
#6: Rose Gavis (left), Betty Vanderlyn (right)
Betty Dabney also started as an operator before advancing through the ranks. She trained employees in other area cities and was eventually appointed a Group Chief of Operators. Betty’s sister Arlene and many high school classmates worked at the company, located just steps away from their alma mater. “When I graduated in 1952, New York Telephone would send representatives to the high school to deliver employment information,” she said. Betty discussed the company’s competitive salary, paid vacation time, flexible hours, and union membership. Some operators worked split shifts, 10 AM to 1 PM and then 6 PM to 10 PM, to accommodate their domestic obligations. Over her career, Betty observed the dress code shift from dresses and skirts to eventually allowing pants. She also trained New York Telephone’s first male operator, a milestone covered by the company’s newspaper.
#8: Ann Boice (left), Alice Dawson (right) posing in front of handwritten message “Kgtn Inf Born Oct 1957 Died Jan 1978”
Dan Reinhard’s mother Helen worked at the New York Telephone Company for 25 years. She was a long distance operator, fielding calls from throughout the Northeast. Dan’s mother often teased, “I had a very well-known person place a call with me last night,” but would refuse to disclose their identity. Years after her retirement, Dan finally goaded Helen into revealing one famous caller: Billy Joel, ringing from Long Island. One memorable night, the company sent a maintenance vehicle through a blizzard to pick up Helen at the Reinhard’s Abbey Street home. Dan said, “I can still remember her climbing up the big step into the truck. And when the shift was over at midnight, the bucket truck brought her home.” Dan recalled Helen mentioning many of the pictured women and the close relationships they shared. “If one person needed a day off, they would switch. They didn’t have to go to management. They liked each other so much, it was just the routine they had. Mom would tell them ‘I’m switching with Rosie Gavis,’ and it all worked out,” Dan said. After Helen accepted an early retirement incentive, the telephone company, and then Verizon, provided her a pension and full health benefits.
#10: Anne Boice (left), Rose (Rosalind) Gavis (right)
Peg Brown’s mother Rose Gavis is shown working in the pictures. Peg noted that another operator pictured in the set, Marilyn Lund, lived in the upstairs apartment of their West Chester Street house and encouraged her mother to apply. Peg said the job provided greater independence, additional income, and an important social outlet. “It was like a sorority, is my recollection. The pictures reminded me how they dressed to the nines,” she said. Most of the operators were acquainted before their New York Telephone careers. Peg explained, “The phone company was just a walk, as was the school, and a lot of the other parts of our lives. They were the kind of people who knew each other so long they had an attachment because their history went back to the old neighborhoods or old memories.”
Many Kingston operators retired when New York Telephone relocated operations to their Catskill and Poughkeepsie offices in the early 1980s. This set of pictures documents an essential and historic group of women workers, the heart of our city’s communication network in the 20th Century.
