155 Halsey = Gibralter Building of Prudential Insurance Co of America
(Nearly) Obsolete Infrastructures - the case of payphones
How does one begin to think about payphones? After all, they are not screaming for attention, but are simply there if ever needed. They are similar, in that way, to other urban infrastructures of connection, for instance the pay-gates of the transit system. For both the pay-gate and the payphone, innovations in technology make what was once familiar obsolete. In recent years, transit in the New Jersey-New York area saw a push for changes, including the retirement of the Smartlink and the Metrocard in favor of the Path TappGo and the OMNY, respectively. The older pay-gate technologies had relied on physical infrastructure that supported card-reading to facilitate smooth transit. Their retirement was both fast and slow: the migration happened over time and over several announcements, but then the actual artifacts -- the cards and the dispensing and reading machines -- were suddenly gone, almost overnight. And so this question of what remains after technology changes, and what older technology infrastructures still remain legible within the changing city, led me to notice public payphones.
Public payphones made their debut in 1889 in Hartford, Connecticut and spread to the rest of the world (1). The first installation was in a bank, and subsequent installations were in similar public spaces: street corners, train and bus stations, or even on a sidewalk in the middle of a street block. In Newark, payphones are a ubiquitous relic, present in their multiplicity, yet they can easily go unnoticed. The payphones, most not working, are part of the cityscape. Their presence is both a reminder of obsolete technology and a marker of what was once a convivial space.
Payphones played a critical role in enabling communication, whether it was businesses receiving orders or loved ones checking in on each other. The network of these payphones carried voices across the country and particularly connected cities like Newark with the suburbs.
Public payphones made their debut in 1889 in Hartford, Connecticut and spread to the rest of the world (1). The first installation was in a bank, and subsequent installations were in similar public spaces: street corners, train and bus stations, or even on a sidewalk in the middle of a street block. In Newark, payphones are a ubiquitous relic, present in their multiplicity, yet they can easily go unnoticed. The payphones, most not working, are part of the cityscape. Their presence is both a reminder of obsolete technology and a marker of what was once a convivial space.
Payphones played a critical role in enabling communication, whether it was businesses receiving orders or loved ones checking in on each other. The network of these payphones carried voices across the country and particularly connected cities like Newark with the suburbs.
To map the payphones on Halsey Street, I drew up a list of payphone numbers from the Newark Payphone Project (2) and sorted the numbers by address. Using the NJ Municipality Lookup (3), I found the geocodes for the addresses and used them to create the map here.
On Halsey Street, there are a total of 30 payphones, with several at the same address, for instance at the Gibraltar Building at 153 Halsey Street, an imposing structure that changed hands from Prudential Insurance (1927) to Hartz Mountain Industrial (1986) to venture capitalists (2021). Other payphones were placed near barber shops, hairdressers and other small businesses. A few of the payphone numbers are traced to individuals.
The payphones on Halsey Street point to networks of bustling commerce with residences embedded.
1 = ETHW Public Telephones
2 = The Payphone Project
3 = NJ Municipality Lookup
—Gilbert Nuwagira
posted August 13, 2026
Map of Payphones Along Halsey Street: each red dot = a payphone
