Article rings in Oklahoma City phone history
One hundred twenty-five years ago, in 1893, Oklahoma City was welcoming its first telephone exchange and their first subscriber, G.W.R. Chinn. Until 1904 when the Pioneer Company, the predecessor to Southwestern Bell Telephone Company, extended their lines to most of the state, there weren’t many phones and subscribers could be listed on a single page. Fast forward 44 years, Oklahoma City had grown and so had the telephone directory as reported in this article from The Oklahoman on May 27, 1937.
The new telephone directory was rolling off the presses Wednesday, listing 54,804 subscribers, the largest number Oklahoma City ever has had. (The city’s 1930 population was 185,389.)
Nobody is supposed to sit down and read a telephone book through, but despite its dull gray color (the last one was green) and monotonous columns, it is an interesting commentary on a city’s growth and development.
In the white section, listing subscribers alphabetically, the first individual is Dan Aakhus, 2500 Northwest Eleventh street, and the last is H. E. Zwirtz, 520 West Chickasaw street — the same as the December issue. Mrs. Louise Zwirtz, 7 Northeast Fifth street, is the last in the new city directory.
The Smiths still hold the lead with 456 in their ranks. The Johnsons run a poor second, with 272. Then follow 240 Browns, 230 Williamses, 195 Davises and 160 Whites.
The whole scope of modern civilization, from “abdominal supporters” to “yeast” is documented in the yellow, classified pages. It is found that Oklahoma City has 588 lawyers to care for our legal troubles and 355 physicians to doctor bodily ills. The idea that there is a drugstore on every corner is disproved with a listing of only 281.
Oklahoma City’s rank in the oil business is testified by the 325 firms listed under “oil.” You can also find, if interested, how the city ranks in cheese, winches, twine, pianos and flags.
For over 70 years, telephone directories continued to grow as did the city and were delivered to Oklahoma porches and businesses. We relied on them for easy access to people and services. But in 2009, AT&T ceased their automatic delivery and went to a request option that continues today.
The ubiquitous cellphone has replaced “letting our fingers do the walking” through a printed directory, as most of us now let our fingers do the typing to locate people and services digitally and the telephone directory of old is slipping into the past to become a tool for the genealogist and the historian.