Where New York's pay phones go to die: Photographer stumbles upon huge hidden 'burial ground' on city's Upper West Side


On Saturday evening, New York City photographer Dave Bledsoe came across quite a find: a giant 'graveyard' of payphones under the West Side Highway.



Bledsoe says he found at least one hundred old, battered payphones locked behind a fence near the Park's Department building.



On his blog, FreeVerse Photography , Beldsoe talks about how it's hard to 'wax nostalgic' about payphone technology.



Hidden spaces: Photographer Dave Bledsoe found 'at least a hundred' payphones in a fenced off area under the West Side Highway at West 135th Street and 12th Ave, near the parks building

Bad technology: On his blog, Bledsoe talks about how it's hard to miss the payphones since many weren't operational and you had to yell over the traffic of the street to be heard on the other line

High cost: The cost of using a payphone has gotten so high, not even mobsters bother to use the anonymous device anymore, Bledsoe speculates

Dying out: Two decades ago, there used to be 35,000 payphones in the city. Today there is only 12,000 'We used these awful open faced boxes where one stood on the street shouting into the receiver hoping to be heard on the other end.

That is - if you found a working pay phone: 'Who hasn't picked up the receiver to discover it no longer connected to the box?' RELATED ARTICLES Previous

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Next Welcome to America: Poignant black and white pictures show... World's longest and widest cable bridge with a span of 10km... Share this article Share And eventually the cost of calling out became too much.

'The cost of using the payphone had spiked from it's friendly dime and quarter days to the point of needing a dollar bill slot. After The Sopranos and The Wire, even criminals stopped using payphones.' The payphone graveyard is certainly a sign of the end of an era in New York. Two decades ago there were nearly 35,000 pay phones in the city - today, only 12,000.



Resurgence: During Hurricane Sandy, payphones experienced an increased popularity with downtowners living without power

Emergency: During Sandy, a Van Wagner Communications rep said some payphones that usually did $2 a day were bringing in $50

Contracts: Van Wagner Communications is one of thirteen companies that have a contract to operate payphones on city land

2014: In October 2014, all 13 contracts for payphone operations run out

The future: Mayor Bloomberg recently held a competition to design new payphones for the city

Out of office: But as Bloomberg won't be mayor in 2014, the designs may amount to nothing



Payphones had a bit of a resurgence after Hurricane Sandy this past November when power was almost completely knocked out in Lower Manhattan.

One of the only functioning technologies for communications were the payphones, which attracted long lines as downtown residents tried to get in contact with friends, family, and work.

'Payphones that normally do two dollars a day [were] taking in $50 a day,' Peter Izzo of Van Wagner Communications told the Wall Street Journal . 'In times of distress, the people of the city love them.'

Van Wagner is one of the 13 companies that have a contract with the city to use the land that the payphones sit on. The payphones themselves are owned and operated by these private contractors.

However, all 13 contracts for payphone rights run out in October 2014, which leaves an uncertain future for payphones.

Recently the Bloomberg administration held the Reinvent Payphones Design Challenge. The goal was to figure out a new design for communications portals that would be most useful for New Yorkers in the age of iPhones.

Highest volume: According to data provided by the city, the most used payphone in the city is at Broadway and West 58th Street

Least popular: One of the least used payphones is at W 95th and Broadway with only 29 calls. There's one payphone with only six calls, but it's location isn't listed