Wooden Phone Booth Sighting: Sardi's

As the Colin Farrell film "Phone Booth" illustrated a few years back, it has become mighty hard to find an outdoor phone booth in New York City anymore, much to the city's lasting poverty.
Even harder to find is a wooden phone booth. These, as a rule, were always to be found indoors and the precious few that still exist remain housed inside the recesses of old restaurants, bars and goverment offices. I, as a rule, keep and eye out for these rare beauties and have been known to get a little too excited when I see them. I can't help it. The folding doors, the shelf-like seat (a wooden stool, if you're lucky), the light that snaps on when the door clicks shut—these details set my head swimming with dreamy nostalgia for a time when it was thought that a phone call demanded and deserved privacy, and the phone you used to make the call on merited a handsome, thoughtfully constructed home.

These twin booths are found on the second floor of Sardi's restaurant, just at the top of the stairs. Both phones are in working order, though the indoor lighting is on the blink. Each has a particularly interesting feature: a switch above the phone which activates a fan—I guess for folks who plan to spend a long time inside. The fan in the booth to the right actually works.