Day 845

As we've seen, New York's emergency call boxes come in many different forms. This is the shell of an old Gamewell (check out the awesome logo) telegraphic fire alarm box with a modern telephonic fire/police button unit installed inside it. Gamewell was the dominant manufacturer of fire call boxes in the US, but this is the first Gamewell box I've noticed in NYC — within the city, they're apparently only found in a few neighborhoods in Queens.

The cylindrical thing mounted on top of the box is a mechanical Arrestolarm, which would have blasted a "loud and distinctive warning shriek" whenever the box was triggered. This was intended to discourage pranksters from setting off false alarms by drawing immediate attention to anyone reporting a fire.