Spring 2000

An Alarming Project: The Fire and Police Call Boxes
by Paul Williams

The D.C. Heritage Tourism Coalition (HTC) has recently initiated efforts to survey and reuse the numerous Fire and Police call boxes, which are located all throughout the city but have been abandoned since 1976. The Department of Public Works estimates that more than 1,500 call boxes exist in various states of repair throughout the city. The ornate, cast iron bases were originally the bases to the tall gas street lamps that first went into use in 1848. As early as 1926, when many people did not have telephones in their homes, these cast iron gems held a phone that offered direct access to the respective emergency department. Residents have recently become alarmed that the decorative boxes were being removed when sidewalk repair was being done and have joined forces under the guidance of the HTC to survey the call boxes neighborhood by neighborhood.

So far, more than a dozen surveys have recorded the type, location, missing parts, and current overall condition of the call boxes. The HTC is coordinating this effort with the Department of Public Works to ensure that neighborhoods that want to save and reuse their call boxes will have them retained in place.

The HTC is working with the D.C. Commission on the Arts to develop a project plan and funding initiative that would begin as early as this summer for a program to turn the call boxes into neighborhood displays. Neighborhood groups can work with an artist or historian of their choice to rehabilitate the boxes to either tell something about the neighborhood or decorate, perhaps using a historical theme. Some call boxes throughout the city have already been decorated in an ad hoc manner.

HTC hopes that each neighborhood will undertake the project in a community building exercise expressing the individual characteristics of the area while linking into a citywide heritage trail system. For more information or to participate in the survey effort, contact Paul Williams or Kathy Smith at the D.C. Heritage Tourism Coalition at (202) 462-6251.