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35-397: The Telephone Company of New York was formed under franchise in 1876. The principals were Charles A. Cheever and Hilborne Roosevelt . Its purpose was to rent telephone instruments to users, who were expected to provide wires to connect them, for example from factory to office. Such connections already existed for private telegraphs, and the new invention promised to save the cost of hiring

70-596: A PSC ruling in his favor after two years of this dispute. New York Telephone was an AT&T subsidiary until the AT&;T breakup effective January 1, 1984. At that time, New York Telephone, along with the New England Telephone & Telegraph Company , became part of a Regional Bell operating company named NYNEX . The company was referred to as "New York Telephone, a NYNEX Company" before being called simply "NYNEX" starting on January 1, 1994. On August 15, 1997, NYNEX

105-806: A capital of about $ 20,000 (equivalent to $ 572,000 in 2023) to start the enterprise on August 31, 1877. It was the forerunner of American Telephone & Telegraph company, that later Cheever gained control of. They started with one customer at first, J. Lloyd Haigh, the wire manufacturer for the cables for the Brooklyn Bridge . Cheever's telephone company strung only separate lines and had no central switchboard office. They had trouble at first getting customers to subscribe to their telephone service and lost over $ 70,000 (equivalent to $ 2,210,000 in 2023) in their first year of operation mainly due to maintenance they couldn't cover with their few paying customers they had. The Cheever firm went out of business within

140-508: A fruitful inventor of many items run by electricity and was able to turn them into successful business enterprises. He patented electric rock drills, electrical improvements to elevators, telephone appliances and electric fire engines . Of his 100 patents most were telephone improvements. Cheever was also intrigued with Edison's phonograph. He helped form the North American Phonograph Company and organized firms throughout

175-462: A private telegraph operator. Manufacturers of steel wire for the Brooklyn Bridge then under construction were especially prominent among the customers under this scheme, using their own product. Western Union subsidiaries, including Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph, Gold and Stock Telegraph, and American Speaking Telephone, based their New York and San Francisco operations on the telephone exchange principle and thus were larger and more advanced than

210-546: A year and it was followed in 1878 with the Bell Company of New York that had 900 paying customers by August 1879. Cheever formulated a practical way of communicating telegraph messages from moving trains through induction telegraphy. He conducted successful experiments on trains of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad . The concept did not prove to be commercially profitable and was not pursued further. Cheever co-founded

245-486: Is outside above the entryway), law firm Dechert LLP , iStar Financial, Lloyds Banking Group , Instinet , Standard Chartered USA, and Stifel . In 2013, Whole Foods Market finalized a deal to open a 32,000-square-foot (3,000 m ) flagship location spread across the first and second floors of the building. The market opened its doors in January 2017. Pandora Jewelry , Tourneau , and Equinox Fitness also operate in

280-567: The Okonite company, a wire and cable manufacturer that used rubber insulation, since he already owned part of his father's rubber company and combined the technologies to come up with insulated wire. He was also associated with various real estate developments like Wave Crest and Cedarhurst at Far Rockaway, New York . Cheever retired from business in 1897 and died on May 2, 1900, in Far Rockaway after suffering heart failure brought on by an attack of

315-585: The Telecommunications Act of 1996 . The September 11, 2001, attacks destroyed the small telephone exchange inside the World Trade Center , that served the center, and damaged the company's largest exchange building, the Verizon Building at 140 West Street, across Vesey Street. The destruction included cables under Vesey Street as well as inside plant damaged when I-beams and steel from

350-623: The Westchester Telephone Company (which served northern suburban areas, including parts of then- Westchester County which subsequently were incorporated into New York City as the borough of the Bronx ) were consolidated under the name of the New York Telephone Company . The New York and New Jersey Telephone Company, a Bell licensee serving Long Island and Staten Island, was broken up and its New York properties merged with

385-633: The Americas from The Blackstone Group for $ 2.2 billion, the most expensive transaction involving a single office building in New York City since 2008. In August 2016, Real Summit Investment, a real estate investment subsidiary of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority 's Exchange Fund, paid $ 1.15 billion for a 49% stake in the building. In addition to Verizon, other major tenants as of late 2008 include insurance giant MetLife (whose name

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420-449: The Americas to 140 West St. In later years the company sold parts of several exchange buildings, and returned its headquarters to 1095 Avenue of the Americas . Charles A. Cheever Charles Augustus Cheever (September 7, 1852 – May 2, 1900) was an American industrialist and inventor. He was affiliated with Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison improving their inventions. He patented 100 of these improvements, most related to

455-477: The East and West Sides of Manhattan. The locations were one to two miles apart, close to concentrations of office workers while avoiding high prices for land. At each wire center a new central office arose to house telephone switchboards , panel switches and other inside plant , along with technicians, clerks, operators, and other workers. The largest of these was also the corporate headquarters , at 140 West Street on

490-605: The Lower West Side, about a half mile from AT&T headquarters at 195 Broadway . The Manhattan and Bronx parts of the underground system are owned by the Empire City Subway Company subsidiary. Similar construction, on a smaller scale, went on in Brooklyn, Buffalo and other urban areas. Suburban and rural service also expanded, mostly with aerial cable or open wire plant and Strowger switches . Forecasters in

525-673: The New York company as the City and Suburban Telephone Company in 1897. American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) eventually acquired a controlling interest and restored the New York Telephone name. The company went underground in the 1920s, creating expensive new outside plant that fixed its geometry for the century to come. New cable ducts brought more reliable service to customers. They converged at approximately twenty wire centers, which were connected by larger trunk cable ducts running along

560-616: The United States to promote Edison's advanced commercial version of the phonograph. Cheever became acquainted with Bell when his invention of the telephone was in its infancy and considered nothing but a novelty item. He was intrigued by it. Cheever went about figuring out how Bell's invention could be beneficial. He constructed and owned the first telephone line in New York City. It was wired from where he lived at 89 Fifth avenue to where E. N. Dickerson lived on Thirty-fourth street. That wired connection showed potential of greater uses for

595-729: The areas served by the Rochester Telephone Company and other smaller independent local exchange companies. The company also serves the Greenwich and Byram exchanges in Connecticut . (The rest of Connecticut is served by SNET .) New York Telephone, then operating under the Bell Atlantic brand, was the first Bell telephone company to win approval to provide long-distance service within its operating territory in December 1999, following

630-522: The base of the building. ASICS abruptly vacated its 5,000-square-foot (460 m ) space in October 2015 amid a legal battle with the company's retail operator, less than a year after moving in. In 2016, Salesforce signed a deal to rename the building Salesforce Tower, and the San Francisco-based company plans to eventually occupy 5 floors. The first Salesforce employees in New York City to move to

665-469: The destroyed MDF. An obsolete and recently retired exchange at the West 18th Street office, not yet melted down for scrap metal, was temporarily resurrected to serve thousands of E13 customers though existing crosstown cables. The damaged Number One Crossbar Switching System (1XB switch) was cleaned, and a Number One Electronic Switching System (1ESS switch) that had been destined for the 104 Broad Street exchange

700-626: The early 2000s and sold off most of the Sixth Avenue building. Verizon retained a condominium interest in floors 6-12, where it maintained offices and a telephone exchange serving landlines in Midtown Manhattan . In 2013, the company moved its corporate headquarters back to 1095 Avenue of the Americas after selling the upper floors of the Verizon Building. In 2015, Ivanhoé Cambridge and Callahan Capital Properties purchased 1095 Avenue of

735-551: The grip. He never married and was commodore of the New York Yacht Club . At the time of his death his parents were still living, as was two brothers and two sisters. 1095 Avenue of the Americas 1095 Avenue of the Americas is a 630-foot-tall (190 m) skyscraper in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City . It was constructed from 1971 to 1973 to be the headquarters of New York Telephone Company and has 41 floors. The building also served as

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770-436: The headquarters of NYNEX and Bell Atlantic . Kahn & Jacobs designed the tower, which is the 98th tallest building in the city . The original facade was said to be designed to resemble the relays which were commonly found inside telephones of the time. From 2006 to 2007, the tower was upgraded from Class B+ to Class A office space for $ 260 million. The phone company moved its headquarters to 140 West Street in

805-576: The late 1960s underestimated demand, resulting in a shortage of capacity in Manhattan, NYTel's principal profit area. Customers had to wait weeks for a new line or a repair, and sometimes minutes for dial tone on an existing line. The new 1ESS Stored Program Control exchanges had software bugs that kept them from carrying full load. Deferred maintenance choked main distribution frames (MDFs) with dead jumpers. There were not enough cables to office buildings, nor enough underground conduits to install them. Morale

840-572: The local Bell operations. Under the November 1879 settlement of the Elisha Gray patent infringement lawsuit, Western Union handed over its telephone operations to National Bell Telephone, which then renamed itself American Bell Telephone. The merged local company was called the Metropolitan Telephone and Telegraph Company . In 1896 the operations of Metropolitan Telephone and Telegraph Company and

875-412: The network. Madison Street was closed and cables run out the lower windows of the two buildings and along the pavement to bring immediate service to a few hundred police telephone lines. Workers from throughout the country, including 3,000 Verizon employees plus non-Verizon employees, helped restore service, allowing the network to carry 230,000,000 calls during the first week following the attacks. During

910-473: The restoration efforts, trunk cables were run out windows and down the side of the building, flowing through streets closed to traffic, until they found an undamaged manhole for them to enter. DMS-100 and other exchange equipment was damaged and replaced the following year. The building was completely renovated restoring it to its former glory as corporate headquarters. In a ceremony on December 8, 2005, Verizon moved its corporate headquarters from 1095 Avenue of

945-400: The software bugs. A new wire center at 1095 Avenue of the Americas and 42nd Street relieved four others in Midtown Manhattan of part of their load, as well as providing the company with a new headquarters for the next several decades. The crisis subsided during the 1970s, decreasing the number of workers needed to facilitate the development of the industry. On February 27, 1975, a fire in

980-524: The telephone building at 204 Second Avenue and East 13th Street destroyed the MDF, disconnecting tens of thousands of customers, and obsolescent switching equipment was destroyed or damaged by smoke. Located at the south end of the East Side trunk cable duct under Second Avenue , this building connects many circuits to Brooklyn which were disrupted. A Bell System mobilization dealt with the crisis, including replacing

1015-579: The telephone. Cheever formed the Telephone Company of New York and constructed the first telephone line in New York City . He was disabled early in his life and was an invalid. Cheever was born in Boston, Massachusetts , on September 7, 1852. His parents moved to New York when he was around five years old. His father was John Haven Cheever, president of New York Belting and Packing company , and his mother

1050-692: The telephone. Cheever then experimented with a telephone line from his office in the Tribune Building with one to the American Institute Fair to demonstrate commercial usage. He showed the quality of the sound traveling on telephone lines to be good by demonstrating the playing of the band at the Fair reproduced at his office. Cheever organized and formed the Telephone Company of New York with Hilborne Lewis Roosevelt as his business partner using

1085-466: The towers ran through the building. Service was disrupted to approximately 300,000 business and consumer voice circuits, 3,600,000 data circuits (including the New York Stock Exchange ), and 10 cell towers . Police Department headquarters lost telephone service, but the nearby NYTel building at 375 Pearl Street had its own small exchange which only lost part of its connections to the rest of

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1120-400: Was Anna Elizabeth (Nee Dow ) Cheever. He was paralyzed from his waist down at an early age because of a physical development problem. Cheever was about 4 feet (1.2 m) in height and weighed only 70 pounds (32 kg) as an adult. He had to be carried around by a male assistant all the time as he was not able to walk. Cheever became a successful businessman and entrepreneur. He was

1155-408: Was acquired by Bell Atlantic , who kept the Bell Atlantic name. On June 30, 2000, Bell Atlantic acquired GTE to form the current Verizon Communications , with the corporate headquarters remaining the same 1095 Avenue of the Americas location until 2006 when HQ returned to 140 West Street . New York Telephone provides local telephone service throughout the state of New York , with the exception of

1190-592: Was diverted. This was the largest loss of telephone service from fire in United States history until the September 11 attacks . In 1977–1979, New York Telephone got (sometimes mocking) news coverage for trying to remove a long phone book listing for "Montmartre Govt Of" from the government blue pages. Theater promoter Barry Alan Richmond, who had paid for that listing, appealed to the New York Public Service Commission and two courts, finally announcing

1225-448: Was poor in all levels and departments, and strikes were frequent. The company's response was to hire and train thousands of new employees and to purchase new equipment on which they could work. Underground construction took years, but emergency installation of Anaconda Carrier pair gain systems normally used in rural areas expanded service while construction was in progress. Bell Labs added processing power to their new systems and fixed

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