New York Telephone Switching Building / AT&T Switching Center
A 1961 job on one of Hell's Kitchen's giant windowless telephone fortresses.
The AT&T building at 811 10th Avenue, Manhattan, at night in 2020. Photographed in 2020; a current view, not a construction-period photograph.
Current view · 2020 · Photo: Brokkeli rob · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source
Why this project matters
- Project identity
- Verified
- Kelly connection
- Family source
- Masonry scope
- Probable
Rita’s list
Transcription: Telephone Building 54th and 10 Ave — 1961
Recorded by Rita Bartscherer · Bartscherer family record
KM-037
1 of two
“Telephone Building 54th and 10 Ave — 1961”
811 Tenth Avenue was built in 1961–63 as a major New York Telephone switching center designed by Kahn & Jacobs.
A visually extreme example of function-first communications infrastructure, built at the start of the 1960s telecommunications boom.
What Kelly did here
Family source
Probable
Likely: most plausibly concealed/interior CMU or block at equipment rooms, service spaces, shafts and fire-rated partitions. Do not imply that Kelly created the building's defining exterior: contemporary descriptions characterize 811 Tenth Avenue as a windowless concrete telecommunications monolith/fortress.
This scope is recorded as probable, not documented. It is a disciplined reading of the building and the trade practice of the period, not a contract-level record of Kelly’s work.
The construction team
- 01Architect
Kahn & Jacobs
What happened to it
Still standing
The building still functions as communications/data infrastructure rather than having been converted to a conventional office or residential use.
Sources
3 citedOpen →
- 01skyscrapercenter.com
11415
- 02commons.wikimedia.org
Category:811 Tenth Avenue
- 03cromwell-intl.com
new york internet
- Brokkeli rob · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · Taken on 2
The AT&T building at 811 10th Avenue, Manhattan, at night in 2020. Photographed in 2020; a current view, not a construction-period photograph.
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