Vintage Phonebooks

[Yeps]

Does anyone know what 1940s phonebooks looked like (pics?)? I am in a production of On The Town right now, and we can't find info on it.

 

[ginfizz]

Who are you in Our Town? I was in that play once!

http://www.oldtelephonebooks.com/pbcoll.html

I don't know if any of this helps, but this is what I found.

 

[Yeps]

That is fantastic. I am mostly crew on this production (on the fly rail,) but I am the Miss Turnstiles Announcer, because the directors forgot to cast it till a week before the show.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Most Bell System directories used the same general cover design -- an image of the "Spirit Of Communication".

Big urban directories might feature a fancier cover -- I have a copy of the 1944 Manhattan Yellow Pages with an elegant full-color painting of a Liberty ship on the front between bright red borders -- but most run-of-the-mill Bell System books used the above cover from the early thirties to the early fifties. Independent phone companies could use any design they wanted, but most of these tended to be print-heavy with ads and such on the front instead of elaborate artwork.

 

[Weston]

I have my grandmothers, which looks very similar to Lizzie's, except it had a chipboard binder that surrounded it with some 40's typography reading "Telephone Book" on it. As the new ones were issued, you simply put it into the binder.

 

[AtomicEraTom]

The ones I typically see look like Lizzie's example. Good ol' Ma Bell.

 

[ginfizz]

Good luck with it! It's such a fun show.