Who had a telephone table in their house?

[Baitball Blogger]

Top shelf for the phone, and the undershelf for the phone book. At least, that's how it worked in my house.

[IADEMO2004]

1. Yes

[polmaven]

2. Here!!

[PunkinPi]

3. I do. nt

[bucolic_frolic]

4. You know, we had a colonial one

but it never had a phone on it, just books and magazines. The phone was in another room. And the phone was rented every month, about $2.32 which was a lot of money at that time, like an hour's pay every month.

[Bob Loblaw]

5. 40 years of rent on the phone too, what a racket.

Our table had a lamp on it. One phone was on the wall in the kitchen and the other was in my parent's room

[JenniferJuniper]

6. The one in my parents' room was illegal;

my uncle was an installer for the phone company and he put it in for them. Insanely heavy black thing that I never saw them even use.

[Bob Loblaw]

8. I think I remember a murder being committed

on a soap opera with a character being hit in the head with one of those phones. It seemed plausible if you were strong enough to pick it up.

[paleotn]

44. You too?

My dad worked for Ma Bell as well. An unofficial side benefit of working for AT&T. I remember telephone offices, where dad worked, as massive buildings, full of incredibly noisy equipment, and wiring of every color and pattern of stripes one can imagine. I've still got a few of dad's old tools with the AT&T subsidiary Western Electric marked on them.

[3Hotdogs]

19. That was the beginning of the end of the phone company monopoly.

IBM would also only rent their machines. This was declared monopolistic and they had to offer the option to buy the machines. Rental of phones soon followed. After that, you could go into a new place called, Radio Shack, buy your cheap phone and recover the cost in about a year.

Next came M.C.I. where you could make your long distance calls less expensively if you punched in a code before making the calls.

[hlthe2b]

7. My grandmother did. That little nook and that old black rotary phone-- with its

classic ring, made for some wonderful childhood memories.

[Bob Loblaw]

9. My grandparents had it "turned up to 11"

That ring could wake the dead.

[hlthe2b]

12. True that...

[madaboutharry]

10. I think this is the quintessential mid-century piece of furniture.

I love telephone tables. I don't have one, but my mother has one next to her bed that functions as a night table. She has a lamp on it.

[bucolic_frolic]

27. Mid-century was an interesting juxtaposition

You had 50's colonial with turned legs, beveled edges, and brown lacquer finish, but there was also Sputnik/Jetson's space age with chrome tips, often formica tops, and flat straight lines, like the one in the OP. Only Swedish modern or Shaker had similar spare design.

[ms liberty]

11. Yes, but this is what we've always called an end table

Lamp on top, magazines underneath, room for a cup of coffee and an ashtray in front. Sits next to the couch or chair.
A telephone table has a seat. My grandmother had one, and I owned it for a while and then gave to my sister, not too long before her house burned down and she lost everything. Here's an example of one almost exactly the same as mine, but I'm having no luck this am with posting the actual pic:
https://images.app.goo.gl/FM8y9EYLwjqWecZV6

[Baitball Blogger]

13. I didn't think about it, but they would work as endtables.

I'm trying to remember if the one that my parents put in our narrow hallway was an actual telephone table with chair. For the life of me, I can't remember the chair, but I know it had to be there since there was no where else in the hallway to sit.

[llmart]

21. Thank you for that.

Yes, this was not technically called a telephone table. This was just considered an end table. Of course someone could put their telephone on it if they wanted to, but I don't remember my parents ever using it as a telephone table. We had two of these for each end of the couch.

[patricia92243]

24. the picture is the one I had.

[LittleGirl]

35. Yes! I remember those

And when I read telephone table, my mind went to the ones that had seats!

[True Blue American]

41. Same here.

I had a phone desk with chair and back. End tables like the picture.

[Sherman A1]

14. I believe we had one like that, but it was just used as an end table

With a lamp. The phone was mounted in a built in nook in our hallway. Just above the door bell and the clothes chute to the basement.

[Roy Rolling]

15. My wife did

There was one phone in the dining room, this was it.

[griffi94]

16. My grandmother had one.

She used hers as a table between 2 recliners. For her phone table she had a small desk.

[3Hotdogs]

17. We had two end tables but a small, round job for the phone and the telephone book.

When I was a 'ute, we picked up the phone and the operator came on and "Number, please." Our number was Millburn 6, 0209J.

Ours was a party line. If you picked up the phone and someone else was "on," you waited a few minutes to try again. You could pay more for a private line. My family was the last holdout on paying for the private line. But by the end of the party line option, we were the only ones on it. Finally, there were no more party lines.

When dial phones were introduced, I was in 7th grade. The phone company held a school assembly with a big dial on the stage. We were showed how to use the dial and how great this was going to be.

[safeinOhio]

18. We had a 50s gossip bench.

You can google "gossip bench, image" to see those. Much like the table you had, only had an attached chair. It was in a nook in the hall.

"Gossip Bench, image"

In my booth at the antique mall I'm always selling old rotary phones. Older folks buy em up for the grandkids to see and use.

[Piasladic]

20. What a strange thing

I took your advice and Googled it. At first, I asked myself, "What is that thing?"
I can kind of see how it would be useful though.

[CurtEastPoint]

23. I have never heard this. I googled and there are great images!

https://www.google.com/search?q=Gossip+Bench%2C&oq=Gossip+Bench%2C&aqs=chrome..69i57&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

[snowybirdie]

29. That's what we had

It sat in the foyer so we could talk somewhat privately.

[PAMod]

22. We had one when I was a kid, but I never knew it was for a telephone

Ours had a lamp and an ashtray that looked like a cooking pot.

The phone was on the wall in the kitchen, with a cord long enough that my sister could take the handset into the basement stairs for private conversations.

Related story - when my great-uncle & aunt got their first cordless phone a couple of years ago, we were visiting when the phone rang. Uncle Bud got up and answered it, and continued to stand right next to the base (where their phone had been for 60+ years) until the call was completed. Old habits are hard to break...

[Raven]

25. I remember that table well...I sat in the dark

at that table in 1960 waiting for my parents to call from NYC after they had survived an airplane crash. One of the worst days of my life.

[The Wizard]

26. Still have one like that

It's now a night stand.

[MyOwnPeace]

28. Didn't need a table.........

We had a shelf opening in the wall between the living room and the hall leading to one of the bedrooms. That way you didn't need to dash all the way into the living room to answer the phone when it rang!
However, conversations tended to be shorter because you were standing (not a bad thing!).

[alittlelark]

55. We had the same set-up,

But ours was between the living room and the kitchen.

[musicman65]

30. Still have the tables

not the phones

[Siwsan]

31. I have an "Early American" style telephone table that came with the house

It's in the "storage" room, right now. This is a good reminder to get it out, clean it up, and add it to the furniture donations I'm about to make to Habitat for Humanity or Volunteers of America. Maybe both. I'm getting shed of quite a bit.

[randr]

32. We had a dial wall phone with a 10 foot long cord

It was in the kitchen and you could walk down to the den or over to the dinning room with the hand set.
I still remember my home number and the number of the girl who became my first wife.

[True Blue American]

39. 10 inch cord

Curly. You had to untwist it every time a teen talked for hours!

[Sloumeau]

33. We had an end table like that, but in the 1970s...

our one phone was mounted on the wall in the kitchen and had a long spiral phone cord that attached the reciever to the phone. We stretched the heck out of the cord yanking the receiver into the living room.

[doc03]

34. We had a telephone table in the 50s but it had a built in seat a I remember

it was located in the downstairs hallway next to the stairs. In 1959 we moved into a new
ranch style home where we had a wallphone in the kitchen. I remember the old phone
with an operator you would tell her what city and a number. In the new house we had a dial phone
our number was Neptune 5-0846. Remember those exchanges before all numbers we used words and
the first two letters corresponded with the numbers on the dial?

Neptune 63
Cedar 23

[lark]

45. I remember those days.

You could tell where a person lived by their phone number. So everyone in my area had 765 as the prefix. I don't remember the name, bad old memory at times, but I do remember that's how we referred to the #'s - Evergreen 34 for example was the start of the one for my best friend who moved across town.

I also remember party lines, you'd have to pick up the phone and listen to see if the other party was on the phone. If not, you made your call, if so, you immediately hung up. It'd be annoying when talking to my boyfriend and the phone kept clicking with the people trying to get on. I remember the day we got off the party line, my sister and I were so damn happy!!

[kaotikross]

36. that brings back memories

we had this exact same table until everything went cordless. so did my grandparents. same little bars on the side and everything. all it's missing is the doily, old rotary phone and astray crammed with butts.

[bitterross]

37. We had one! Right next to the fridge. Where the phonebook lived.

We had a table that was built into the wall right above the telephone jack. It was right next to the fridge in the kitchen. It was where the phonebook could always be found.

[True Blue American]

38. Mine

Was a chair with back ,table and shelf.

[MarianJack]

40. My mom had one.

RESIST!

[redstatebluegirl]

42. Yep!

[lark]

43. Yes.

We had a phone on the wall in the kitchen for the longest time, then we got a 2nd phone which we kept in the den, on a table just like that, with the lamp right beside it and the phone book underneath.

[paleotn]

46. Two end tables in the den just like that.

One had a phone. A big black one before we got a princess desk phone. A trim line was attached to a wall in the kitchen. I could play in the den and those tables were great forts for legions of green army men. The formal living room was strictly off limits.

[dewsgirl]

47. My grandparents had these, I never knew that's what they were.

[gibraltar72]

48. Ours was wrought iron.

[Kingofalldems]

49. I have one with a chair attached to it.

[Ron Obvious]

50. We did. It was in the hall.

It had wire that just disappeared into the wall. You could never unplug it or turn the ringer off.

Good thing there were no spam calls in those days.

[Maggiemayhem]

51. That is called a step end table

Although you could use it for phone table. The phones back in the day were wired into a little box shaped outlet so your phone was near that outlet.

[WhiteTara]

52. mine was more art deco

with a chair back.

[LakeArenal]

53. Ours was more like this:

But Mr Lake made one like yours in shop class in 19........?

Do they even have shop class anymore?

[Fla Dem]

54. I forget where we kept our table phone. I know it was in the kitchen.

It was the only one we had and the only phone line into the house. It was where the kitchen table was, so I'm thinking it must have been on some kind of wall shelf. When wall phones came out, it was installed in the same place.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

56. Of course. At least until we got the kind that hung on the wall

and had a really long cord so I could hide in the broom closet and talk to my friends without my parents hearing me.