Buzz
Phone booths may have been integral to fictional stories from Superman to Doctor Who, but their relevance in the real world has sharply diminished. The demand is so low that you can even adopt a phone booth in the British countryside for as little as £1!
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the phone booth. But rather than leaving these once-iconic structures to fade into history, modern creatives are embracing and reimagining them to serve today's needs. Since 2008, over 6,600 phone booths in the UK have been transformed into valuable community services, and this global trend continues to grow. Here are 10 innovative ways defunct phone booths can now benefit your community, even without the need for a working phone line.
10. A Modern Twist: Wi-Fi Hotspots
While the rise of smartphones and the internet has made payphones nearly obsolete, some have found a new life as Wi-Fi hotspots. In an ironic turn of events, payphones are now being repurposed to provide free internet access to smartphone users. In 2014, New York City converted payphones into “LinkNYC” kiosks that offer high-speed Wi-Fi, phone charging, and access to city services. Similarly, South Africa launched a similar initiative in 2014.
9. No Late Fees Here: Little Free Libraries
Do you enjoy letting fate decide your reading material and despise late fees? There are over 150,000 Little Free Libraries worldwide, with at least 20 located in repurposed phone booths. These tiny community libraries allow people to exchange books for free, with the simple rule of ‘Leave a Book, Take a Book.’ These sturdy, weather-resistant structures have found a perfect new life as book exchanges. The last remaining phone booth in Iceland has been transformed into a Little Free Library, fitting for a nation with a 99% literacy rate.
8. Turning Red to Green: Charging Stations
While red is synonymous with phone booths, six booths near London’s Tottenham Court Road have undergone a literal and figurative transformation. The award-winning Solarbox initiative gives old phone booths a green revamp by turning them into charging stations. These booths, painted green and equipped with solar panels, harness the sun’s energy to power up phones, offering up to 100 charges a day.
In South Korea, phone booths are taking green innovation a step further by serving as charging stations for electric bikes, an eco-friendly transportation option. This project, launched in 2015, aims to convert 900 booths into hubs for electric bike charging.
7. Saving Time and Lives: Defibrillator Stations
The Community Heartbeat Trust, a UK-based organization, is repurposing retired phone booths into life-saving defibrillator stations. Phone booths make perfect homes for defibrillators due to their visibility, recognition, and durability in all weather conditions.
This initiative is especially critical in rural areas, where emergency response times can be quite long. For instance, in Cornwall, ambulance response times are the longest in the UK, averaging a staggering 1 hour and 41 minutes.
6. Dial for Dinner: Serving Food & Drinks
In 2016, a London restaurateur transformed a retired phone booth into a temporary restaurant, Spiers Salads. The booth was fitted with refrigeration and offered five different types of fresh salads to customers.
A creative entrepreneur based in Atlanta repurposed a classic red phone booth while keeping the phone line intact. At The Red Phone Booth’s Dallas Fort Worth location, a phone booth serves as the secret entrance to a speakeasy. Only those who dial the secret number can gain access to this hidden establishment, where Prohibition-style drinks and food are served.
5. Art Everywhere: Public Galleries
Exploring the art in large galleries like the Louvre or Rijksmuseum may take hours, but a phone booth gallery allows visitors to appreciate creativity in just minutes. Cleveland’s smallest art gallery was set up in a defunct payphone in the Waterloo Arts District. By 2021, artists ranging from Glenn Gigon to Patti Smith have transformed New York’s old payphones into public art pieces.
In Laguna Beach, California, an old phone booth has been turned into a rotating art installation. Artists are invited to reinterpret the booth in their own creative ways, bringing both whimsy and serious messages. For example, Sir Giles Gilbert Scott created an exhibition celebrating Jewish artists in his London phone booth, located across from the British Museum, to raise awareness of the Holocaust.
4. Bard Box: Poems on Demand
Henry David Thoreau once said, “Poetry cannot breathe in the scholar’s atmosphere.” He might be pleased to witness poetry thriving in the open, available to any passerby, through the Telepoem Project.
The Telepoem Project transforms old phone booths and payphones into “3-dimensional literary magazines,” where callers can access over 1,000 poems by dialing a vintage phone number. Telepoem booths can be found in Arizona, California, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Iowa. The phone numbers are uniquely crafted using the poet’s location (first three digits), the first three letters of the poet’s surname (next three digits), and the first word of the poem’s title (last four digits). To experience it, you'll need to visit the booths in person as these numbers only work within the Telepoem booths.
If you prefer a comedy show to poetry, visit the Joke Phone in Washington D.C.’s Chevy Chase neighborhood. Local kids from nearby Lafayette Elementary School can dial *1 for a knock-knock joke, *5 for fun facts, and *8 for positive affirmations. It might just be the one time kids should talk to strangers.
3. Creating a Space to Mourn: The Wind Phone
Public spaces specifically meant for sharing grief are rare, with cemeteries being one of the few. Itaru Sasaki, the creator of the Wind Phone, inspired a movement to repurpose phone booths into places for communal mourning.
When Sasaki’s cousin passed away from terminal cancer, he yearned for a connection. Sasaki set up an old phone booth in his garden and used the disconnected phone to speak to his cousin, with his words symbolically ‘carried on the wind.’ After the Tohoku tsunami, Sasaki opened this healing space to his community, inviting those who had lost loved ones in the disaster to visit the wind phone and speak to their departed family members.
Since then, copies of the original wind phone have been constructed around the world. The volunteer-run website My Wind Phone allows users to find wind phones near them.
2. Sparkling Clean: Free Phone Booth Hygiene
In the small German village of Grossenbrode, you can enjoy a refreshing swim in the Baltic Sea and rinse off in a repurposed phone booth. Even if you're not by the coast, a phone booth toilet can offer a quirky solution for your hygiene needs. This concept was brought to life in the UK by Emily and Daniel Lancaster, who provided detailed plans and a budget for anyone interested in creating their own version.
The toilet phone booth idea also surfaced in Hong Kong, where the public was invited to propose ideas for repurposing 2,900 phone booths. Among the top 34 suggestions were turning them into smoking booths, nap booths, or even stress-relief booths where one could channel their inner Ron Burgundy, close the door, and scream.
1. How Can It Assist You?: Helping the Elderly
When you need help, what do you do? For most smartphone users, it’s as easy as making a call. But for those who find technology challenging, reaching emergency assistance can be more complicated. In Shanghai, 500 phone booths are being reimagined to help address this issue. These refurbished booths are equipped with a simple digital interface, smart cameras, and a dedicated 114 hotline for seniors.
Other communities have discovered that keeping pay phones and phone booths operational is a simple yet effective way to help seniors and others in need stay connected. In 2015, Portland introduced the Futel No-Pay Payphone. Karl Anderson and Elijah St. Clair repurposed an old phone booth on SE Clinton Street by connecting it to the internet and converting it into a Voice Over IP phone. A second booth was set up near a homeless encampment, Right2DreamToo, giving residents without cell phones access to call their medical providers, case workers, or simply stay in touch with loved ones.
