sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Old telephone exchanges

Just out of curiosity what happens to old telephone exchange buildings when they are no longer needed in your part of the country.

I was driving around the city this week and found 4 that are still standing but being put to different purposes.

2 have been converted into apartments and one to a cabinet making company and the last one to a neighborhood watch office or something like that.

One more Winnipeg exchange has been downsized into a remote and the rest of the building is home to the MTS chapter of the Telephone Pioneers.

The New York City Human Resources Administration[the City agency that I retired from after 34 years as a sparky],leased two floors of the Verizon building at 1976 Grand Concourse,Bronx,N.Y.This space had been Verizon administative space that was surplus since the late 80's.I believe that the other 6 floors still contain switching equipment. My agency also took six out of the 12 vacant floors of the former verizon building on Hillside ave. in Queens N.Y. In downtown Brooklyn N.Y.,a large Verizon building was completely emptied and turned into condominiums.The name appropriately , is' Bell Tel Lofts.'

Around here it's pretty common for old telco building to be repurposed as data centers. The floor my datacenter is on is an old GTE Exchange that has been converted to various POP's by carriers.

One thing on all the new exchanges I have seen built in Manitoba is they don't have pride of ownership like the old ones.

The ones that were sold as well as the old ones still in use that were built from the 1920's through the 1950's are impressive looking buildings, all red brick, and lots of windows with "Manitoba Government Telephone System" carved into the Tyndall stone lintel above the doors.

The new ones have a nondescript brick finish with a small little name plaque bolted to the front.

My neck of the woods are too small to have abandon the old telephone exchange buildings. They (Fairpoint, ex-Verizon, ex-Bell Atlantic, ex-whatever) did obviously downsize their hardware from the huge mechanical switches to a few cabinets of equipment in the smaller COs. It was kinda humorous to walk into the CLEC side of the main floor of the CO. The CLEC cage all of a couple hundred square feet if that. Then the rest of the floor was empty, except a back wall where I could see a few cabinets for the digital switches. Oh and an engineers/wiring tech's desk. Otherwise completely empty room.

And creative use of tarps to channel water from leaking roof into trash bins.

The ones around here are growing in size. Verizon's (Bell Atlantic) "Lees Hill" exchange in Fredericksburg, VA (540-898) has doubled in size recently, likely due to the huge growth in the area and the advent of FIOS. It used to be a sleepy little 5ERSM, but now it it is a full DSO with COLO facilities. It also serves several wireless carriers.

I will say that I've seen some buildings that housed remotes simply abandoned or demolished, but they served such tiny areas that they were replaced with SLC96 cabinets. That occurred 20+ years ago.

I honestly haven't seen any that have actually reduced in size except for some of the ones in downtown DC that were located in the basements of large office buildings. Most of those have become remotes or have simply been eliminated, likely due to insane rental rates.

the CO by my house actually added on, for more colo space.

Not too long ago, Verizon sold their building at 185 Franklin Street in Boston (across the street from where I work). The building is the former headquarters for New England Telephone.

Verizon will rent a few floors in the building for their network and switching equipment as well as technician space. The rest, as I understand it, will be renovated and used for commercial and maybe residential purposes.

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During my years with Bell I saw only 2 buildings that were abandoned and replaced with new buildings. Both were situations where there simply was not enough land to expand the building. In both cases the new building was on the same road and within 1000’ of the old building. Most of the existing large cables could be extended to the new buildings and major cable placements were not needed. One building became a real estate office and one became a city library. Both were small C.O. serving approximately 5,000 lines when they were replaced. Since they were built, both of the new buildings have had major additions. This was in a period of approximately 20 years. Both are offices serving resort communities and both are now approximately 15,000 lines.

Even with the change in technology which saw equipment getting smaller, I saw numerous of offices receive building additions. A few were due to collocation but the majority were the result of population growth and the booming housing market in the resort areas. This same growth lead to taking parts of four separate exchange areas and creating a totally new wire center.