I found eleven working payphones at the St. George Staten Island Ferry Terminal in Staten Island. All are owned by PTS, the nation’s largest payphone service provider, which would have acquired these phones from Verizon around 2008 or 2009. I did not have time to put many of them to the test but it seemed most if not all of these devices had dial tone and should be expected to work.

I made one call. Here it is:

The call is mostly clear but one bit that got garbled was where I said I wanted to see the new mall, referring to the Empire Outlet Mall adjacent to the ferry terminal. It was the middle of a weekday and all, so I did not expect any kind of crowds, but still, the place looked and felt like the ghost town that TheCity.NYC described it as, not just in terms of so few shoppers but so much empty retail space.

All the phones at St. George Terminal look like this, mounted on a carousel stand that holds up to three phones. Also present were some carousels emptied of their payphones. The quantity of carousels suggests that one time as many as 24 payphones inhabited this terminal.

Eleven working payphones in this terminal still seems like a lot, though. If the payphone population at Penn Station continues to dwindle then this ferry terminal may earn the coveted dubious distinction of having the most working payphones under one roof in NYC. How exciting would that be for Staten Islanders?

I had not taken a Staten Island Ferry ride in a long time. Rain came down on the return trip, this as I was breaking in a newly-acquired camera. Some of my pictures from the Staten Island Ferry came out OK, but conditions were not ideal for a point-and-shoot long zoom.

At one time the ferries themselves probably had payphones on board. I know the Circle Line had payphones on its boats in the early 1990s, a fact I confirmed in an email exchange with a representative at the company. I made no attempt to locate evidence of a payphone gone on the Staten Island Ferry.

These phones at the terminal all have two phone numbers printed on them. It appears the bottom number is accurate, while the top number must be left over from previous installations at other locations. I found none of these numbers listed in my Staten Island payphone number data museum. Attempts to call the payphones at this terminal all returned silence, instead of the usual annoying modem sound.

One phone had no proper phone number displayed, and I did not try the MCI ANI check. Numbers for 10 of the 11 payphones at the St. George Ferry Terminal follow:

347-817-7481

347-817-7653

347-817-7631

347-817-7630

347-817-7482

347-223-5741

347-817-7651

347-817-7652

347-817-7655

347-817-7654

Stickers showing the correct CallerID for these phones appear at the bottom of the devices.

Inaccurate CallerID, probably left over from when these phones were at another location, appears above the touchtone keypad. I thought it might mean these phones were converted to cellular and their numbers changed on that account, but Twilio lookups say these phones connect Verizon copper landline.