Upper West Side Is Home To NYC's Last 4 Phone Booths

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — Superman's chances of finding a changing room have been narrowed to only one New York City neighborhood – the only phone booths still standing in the city are all found on the Upper West Side.

The city's famous phone booths have been replaced by the NYC Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications with LinkNYC kiosks.

But, while the species has almost been completely wiped off the face of the earth, the Upper West Side has become a booth hold-out, according to various reports over the past couple of years including from the New York Times and NY1.

The old-school phone booths are located on West End Avenue at West 66th Street, West 90th Street, West 100th Street, and West 101st Street.

The public phone at West 100th inspired Upper West Side resident Peter Ackerman to publish a children's book in 2010 called "The Lonely Phone Booth."

"A sad, forgotten phone booth in New York City becomes a hero in this story of community and caring for others," reads a description for the book about the phone booth on West End Avenue and West 100th Street.

If you walk a block uptown, you'll find its neighboring phone booth at West 101st Street.

At a higher rate than you might expect, you can walk by and see teenagers using the phone booths for retro photoshoots.

A large reason the phone booths have survived is the work of Alan Flacks, a resident of West 100th Street, the New York Times reports. He has pushed to keep the phone booths operational by placing countless calls to Verizon, gathering signatures, and lobbying local elected officials.

“There’s the obvious reason that these are the iconic New York City phone booths, but also, listen: Sometimes you just need a hard-wired payphone. Cellphones don’t always work,” Flacks told the Times.

Flack's lobbying eventually found the ear of then-Upper West Side City Council Member Gale Brewer, who added a line in the original CityBridge contract for the removal of the five boroughs' phone booths, saying the four phone booths on the Upper West Side would be preserved.

CityBridge is the organization that runs the phone booths and worked to phase them all out and replace them with LinkNYC kiosks.

The phone booths on West 90th and 66th Streets are almost identical.

"I do feel a sense of pride living on a block with a phone booth," Caleb Gutwillig, a longtime resident of West End and West 66th Street, told Patch. "Oftentimes, when I walk out of my building, I see people posing for pictures inside the booth. That brings a smile to my face, as it's nice to see New Yorkers feel nostalgic and interact with the history of their city."

Read More: And Then There Were Four: Phone Booths Saved on Upper West Side Sidewalks