The Tiny Alcove

    

What could this be used for?

    When I moved back to Austin earlier this year to a groovy apartment, there was a tiny alcove in the hallway. My first thought was this tiny space was a little alter. It seemed perfect for some sort of saint of diminutive size to be perched there with plenty of room for offerings to be laid at its feet. Eventually though, I figured out that the space was designed for a telephone. It even had a little shelf underneath for a little phone directory or address book.
    The house I live in was built in 1948 and this was an era when houses and apartments included these phone alcoves or niches in the design, usually in a space that was centrally located like a hallway. I’m always interested in how form follows function, especially when it involves new technology. I’m sure people under 30 would have a hard time figuring out what this alcove was for and when they found out, probably question why it was in the hallway. Around this time most families with a phone probably just had just one line. And what’s more, with the cost of making calls, they probably weren’t going to be on the phone that long. Just a quick, “Hi how are you?” and a quick exchange of pertinent information. After all, talking longer could hike up their monthly bills, especially when calling long distance, which could be just the next town over. There were rates that would be cheaper in the evenings or on weekends but in essence conversations were kept short, no need to sit down on the sofa and blab for 30 minutes. Of course as the technology of phone service developed and became more ubiquitous, the rates came down.
     When we moved to our new Brooklyn apartment in the mid 1970’s, we had 3 telephones: one on an end table in the living room, another in my parent’s bedroom and one that was a wall mounted phone in the kitchen. So I always thought we lived the life of luxury. By the way you didn't own these phones, you rented them from 

A phone similar to the one I had growing up in the 1970's.

    

Ma Bell. The price varied with the style so that the regular rotary phone was the cheapest and the trim line, push button model the most expensive. We only had the rotary dial phones but we did have colored phones, like maroon, yellow and white. After ATT was broken up in 1984 due to antitrust law, they gave you the option of buying your phone. This eventually opened the door to choose from other phone manufacturers and phone service providers, thus driving down prices further. So at each turn, rates would come down however there would be new services that could add to the bill if you chose to have them: such as call waiting, call forwarding and 3-way calling. We never had these services, which were introduced in the 70’s. We were already paying for 3 telephone extensions, so who needs to have these superfluous extras that would drive up the monthly bill?

Costs of renting different phones per month in 1982.

    It was about saving money where you could. When we would leave my grandparents house in Lincoln Park, New Jersey on our way back to Brooklyn after a day of visiting, my grandmother would tell my mother, “Give me two rings.” I thought she wanted physical rings that you’d put on your finger. Why does she want rings? What will she do with them?  What my grandmother actually meant was that when we got home, she wanted my mother to call her, let it ring twice and then hang up.  That way she would know we made it home safe. If my grandmother had picked up the phone, we would be charged whatever long distance rate it was, maybe a couple of bucks for the first three minutes, just to say we made it home. I’m sure many people did this and other things to get around the the phone company. But enough about my childhood experiences with phones.        

    The most pressing thing in my new home became what can I put into this little alcove? A plant perhaps or some sort of knick knack. The answer came one day when I was in a vintage store here in Austin and saw a telephone similar to one that we had in that Brooklyn apartment in the 1970’s. I thought what would be better than putting something in the alcove that it was originally designed for? But then I realized I already had an old telephone in my possession, though nothing like any phone I ever had. I’m a photographer and years ago I was doing classic pin-up work which sometimes required the use of props. One common prop that was featured in old pin-up illustrations and photos was the telephone. You know the ones where the woman would be in sexy lingerie talking very seductively on the phone. That's what I was trying to reproduce in my photo-shoots so I had to rent an old 1950’s era phone.  One day my friend Daisy gifted me a very unique, vintage telephone. It’s actually a Belgian made phone manufactured by RTT (Regie van Telegraaf and Telefoon) in the 1950’s. The receiver end is made of bakelite and the base is copper. It still has the original chord from the receiver to the base but a more modern cable made for US wall jacks has been added. I never tested it to see if it actually works. By the time Daisy had given it to me I had already gotten rid of my land line service 4 years before. I’ve seen prices on eBay for similar phones from between $100-$350. Of course I would never sell this beautiful phone.  It now will forever be prominently displayed in a place made especially for it. 

My first photo-shoot using the RTT phone my friend
Daisy gave to me. Meghan Mayhem is the model.

The Belgian RTT phone in its natural environment.