Memories rekindled amidst Illinois Bell transformation

Construction workers began doing preparation work in front of 119 S. Main St. Tuesday, directing southbound Main Street traffic into the center left-turn lane. Construction workers began doing preparation work in front of 119 S. Main St. Tuesday, directing southbound Main Street traffic into the center left-turn lane. Photo: Tyler Pletsch|The Intelligencer Photo: Tyler Pletsch|The Intelligencer Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Memories rekindled amidst Illinois Bell transformation 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

EDWARDSVILLE — The former Illinois Bell Telephone switching station on South Main Street will soon see change, which has rekindled fond memories for at least some.

For Ric Stephenson, the site was of one of his first jobs while in school.

“I was a student at SIUE beginning in August 1965,” said Stephenson. Stephenson said he began working at the operation in January 1968.

He continued employment until August 1970, when he was drafted into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War.

“While there, I worked part-time for Illinois Bell Telephone as a commercial representative — a bill collector,” he said.

Built in 1931, the building is one Edwardsville’s few remaining or perhaps, its only example of Art Deco architecture. It has a basement and a main level and replaced the old Hartung residents on South Main Street. As it was a Depression-era project, it brought a boost to local laborers who might otherwise have been out-of-work.

Illinois Bell, a predecessor of today’s AT&T, later sold it to the Stahly Cartage Trucking Company. The building had been vacant since 2011 and has recently been purchased.

The building will soon become a restaurant/bar combination with considerable tax-increment financing assistance from the city. An animated rendering briefly shown to a Hearst Media Reporter last year depicted the building with a rooftop patio or garden, a brick-and-glass rear addition with an elevator, and a two-flight staircase.

“In October 1973, after my army duties, I returned to Illinois Bell and continued my employment until September 1975, upon my receiving a master’s degree in counseling,” Stephenson said. “My resume showed that I earned $6.50/hour, not bad for that time period.”

While at Illinois Bell, he worked in the Collinsville and Edwardsville business offices.

“Switching was located in the basement of the building; somewhere that we really had no need to visit,” Stephenson said. “’The Traffic Division,’ or as we knew it, the operators, were stationed in the Collinsville office. The Edwardsville building [had] three or four administrative assistants working in the office.

“Ken Evers was the office manager and IEA Business Manager and his wife was Joan Evers,” Stephenson said. “Ken was very active in the community, as was Joan.”

Stephenson described the building as functional but old.

“My focus was on bill collection, something that, in my humble opinion, I was quite good at,” he said.

Evers remembers the building primarily as the spot to visit his father, Ken Evers, Sr.

“My dad was transferred to Edwardsville from Rockford in 1956,” Evers said. His brother, Ken. Jr., was born in Rockford the year before while Scott was born in Edwardsville shortly after they arrived in town.

Evers said his father’s transfer was part of Illinois Bell’s modernization effort, to move from a system comprised mostly of party-line telephones, a shared form of telephone service popular during the early and mid-20th Century.

Evers said he and his brother often visited their father at the building. The brothers’ father managed the modernization program as well as promotional and public relations efforts for Illinois Bell from this location.

Evers said the building is a certified civil defense bomb shelter from the Cold War-era and is extremely well-built.

“The basement was mostly storage,” he said. “You came in and you either went upstairs or downstairs. The main floor was a completely open space office, but my dad’s office was a glassed-in section.”

Evers said his father managed 10 to 12 secretaries, but linemen and repair technicians would stop at the office to consult or coordinate with him, too.

During a wide-ranging, 45-minute interview with Jerry Veach at the University of Illinois at Springfield in 1973, Ken Sr. talked about living through a dial conversion as a manager for Illinois Bell.

“We purchased property; we constructed a new exchange building. It was equipped with the latest telephone equipment called Number 5 Crossbar Switching,” he said. “We were going to go from a manual telephone system to a totally unique new system that provided, at that time, direct distance dialing, which was totally new. Just think, you could dial the digit 1 and an area code and dial anywhere in the nation.”

Ken Sr. recalled people having trouble placing a phone call to Highland through a manual telephone operator.

“All the equipment was installed and I can remember very vividly at midnight — we were going to make the cut from manual to dial service we were going to interrupt the entire telephone network in this community for about 30 seconds,” he said.

“And although it was very exciting,” he said, “I couldn’t help but feel a little sad because you see, there was an entire room full of telephone operators that have served on that switchboard for 20, 25, 30, as much as 35 years. And all I could see with them were tears and anguish because there was another era that was coming to a close.

“And we went in a matter of 30 seconds from the most antiquated telephone system in southern Illinois to the most modern telephone plant in southern Illinois,” he added.

Evers said Illinois Bell consolidated its services in Collinsville in the early 70s and transferred his father to its Granite City location around 1974 or so. Ken Sr. retired from the phone company prior to running for Edwardsville Mayor, in which he served a single term, from 1981 to 1985.

Reach reporter Charles Bolinger at (618) 659-5735.