Andrea Goh
Phone: 07490169816 E-Mail: andreagohsh@gmail.com
The Red Telephone Box
The image of the red telephone box is very much part of the urban landscape of London. It has become an easily recognizable icon of the city, attracting many tourists to even pose with (or inside) a siren-red telephone box for photographs. The history of the red telephone box started in 1921 when the General Post Office rolled out a scheme to locate telephone boxes around Britain, and more so in London. British Telecom has privatized the telephone boxes since the 1960s, with about 92,000 of these bright red cubicles around Britain at its peak1. The telephone boxes were designed to be highly visible and provide an enclosed private space for a telephone conversation but now, with almost the entire population of urban dwellers with a smart phone in their pockets, the era of the telephone box is drawing to a close. To anyone who has recently stepped into a telephone box in London, would probably have a very different experience from its glory days of the past. These phone booths are now typically associated with being damp, foul smelling with urine and being plastered with pictures and phone numbers of prostitutes (ironically the kiosk would be too grotesque to make use of these numbers) – signs of social breakdown that indicate a failed public space.
1
http://www.the-telephone-box.co.uk/story/