This telephone building is sporting some stylish headgear.
Day 382
Nice hat!
January 15th, 2013
I'm walking every street in New York City.
This is the counterpoint to my walk across the US. Instead of seeing a million places for just a minute each, I'm going to spend a million minutes exploring just one place. By the time I finish walking every block of every street in all five boroughs, I'll have traveled more than 8,000 miles on foot — all within a single city. Details!
Email me at matt@imjustwalkin.com
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Maps: Progress | Photos
~9,954 miles walked
Your donations allow me to keep walking full-time. If you think what I'm doing is valuable and you'd like to offer some support, I would be very grateful. On the other hand, if you think I'm a worthless bum, feel free to email me and tell me to get a job, bozo. Both are excellent options!
what in the blue heck is that?
That’s for cooling the temperature & humidity sensitive (and heat generating) digital telephone call switching equipment which was installed in the late 80’s. When this building was new the switching equipmemt would have been electromechanical equipment (30’s onward) which was noisy but cool. It could tolerate changes in temp. The windows were for the employees.
The equipment had a very low density and so was built vertical. Much of the maintenance was done on rolling ladders. This would have been New York Telephone, part of the AT&T monopoly.
A telephone company building with low ceilings was either built pre-mechanical (operators) or was built late-60’s and onward (electronic switching).
(I’m an employee and have been inside most of these).
A crossbar 1 switch. Last ones take out of service in NYC around 1990!:
http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/images/thumb/2/27/-1_Crossbar_NY_May_1938.jpg/180px–1_Crossbar_NY_May_1938.jpg