Chicago Telephone Company Kedzie Exchange

The decorative elements of the Chicago Telephone Company Kedzie Exchange, a structure built from 1906 to 1907, include an elegant cornice and floral corbels adorning an arched entrance. The building serves as a reminder of the generations of women who staffed the vast human-operated telephone exchanges in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The architects believed the design would make the building feel more welcoming to the many women who worked there. The building also serves as a reminder of an era when switchboard operators were necessary to maintain and manage phone systems. Chicago architects Irving K. Pond and Allen B. Pond, who had designed the renowned Hull House, designed the Classic Revival Kedzie Exchange which had significant additions in 1913,1928, and 1948. 

Chicago's telephone era began in 1877, with nearly 3,000 telephones in service by 1880 and then exceeding 200,000 by the time the Kedzie Exchange building opened in 1906 (a number that more than doubled by 1920). Long before smartphones and satellites, early telephone technology consisted of a vast network of copper lines, cables, underground conduits, and telephone polls, all connecting individual phones to expansive exchange centers operated by a host of switchboard operators. 

Chicago's first telephone exchange opened in 1878 in a rented space. By the 1890s, with the popularity of the phone soaring, exchanges moved from rented spaces to commercial properties they constructed. For instance, the Chicago Telephone Company commissioned acclaimed architect and city planner Daniel H. Burnham to design a series of exchanges for the company's expanding network. Rather than designing industrial buildings, Burnham imparted a civic aspect to the exchange building, deemed a significant approach because of the Chicago Telephone Company's status as a privately owned, publicly regulated monopoly franchise. Indeed, the company wanted to serve the public while simultaneously winning the politicians' favor. 

The operators, almost exclusively comprised of women, manually connected and disconnected callers, an effort that required comprehensive training. Companies preferred women, believing they possessed greater patience and were more polite than their male counterparts, making them better at handling chaotic work and sometimes problematic or frustrated customers. The career proved attractive to female workers mainly because it paid more than domestic work and certainly more than factory jobs. By 1928, Chicago's phone companies employed more than 12,000 women. The female operators were routinely well-educated and came from economic classes resembling today's idea of the upwardly mobile working class or "lower" middle class.

By the first decade of the twentieth century, The Chicago Telephone Company began to address the welfare of women workers in the design of building exteriors and the functionality of the interior. Pond & Pond, who gained fame as the architects of Hull House and multiple other social clubs and settlements in Chicago, seemed suited to design buildings with social welfare in mind instead of a civic approach. In 1904, Pond & Pond designed an exchange building with a separate floor for female employees, including private restrooms, rocking chairs, eating facilities, a small library, artwork, and other breakroom creature comforts. Irving Pond stated that the presence of female employees doing stressful work necessitated the company's attention to beauty and social welfare, and that attitude fed into the design of the Kedzie Exchange building, which opened in 1907.

During the period of the Kedzie Exchange construction, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled the Chicago Telephone Company had overcharged its customers and ordered the company to provide refunds. The ruling came at the same time that Chicago's city council negotiations with Chicago Telephone opened regarding a twenty-year extension of the company's franchise (set to expire in 1909). One aspect of the franchise discussion was a call for a reduction in rates, greater regulation, and a provision that the city would have the future option of buying the telephone company. The Chicago Telephone Company countered this with an aggressive public relations and lobbying campaign to build favorable public sentiment; the new attitudes towards building designs were part of that effort. 

By the mid-twentieth century, automatic dialing began supplanting the need for switchboard operators, resulting in the eventual closing of the Kedzie Exchange in the 1960s. The Chicago School Board took over the building and used it for the Wilhelm K. Roentgen Elementary School, which remained its purpose until the 1990s. The school name remains over the door, and most passing these days likely assume it's simply an abandoned school building. However, it undoubtedly survives as a reminder of the birth of the telephone and the thousands of women who helped make phone communication possible.

Bluestone, Daniel. "Registration Form: Chicago Telephone Company Kedzie Exchange." National Register of Historic Places. archives.gov. 2000. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/28892576. 

"Goodbye to the Hello Girls: Automating the Telephone Exchange." Science Museum. sciencemuseum.org.uk. Accessed December 20, 2023. https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/goodbye-hello-girls-automating-telephone-exchange.

John, Richard R. "Telephony." The Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago. 2005. http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/1236.html.

Singh, Akanksha. "Hold the Line." JSTOR Daily. July 3, 2023. https://daily.jstor.org/hold-the-line/.