Design

Where New York's Old Telephone Booths Go to Die

A photographer stumbles on a payphone 'graveyard' in West Harlem.
Dave Bledsoe

New York-based photographer Dave Bledsoe always carries his camera around just in case he happens upon a discovery like this.

On a recent walk, Bledsoe uncovered a graveyard of old pay phones underneath the elevated railroad tracks near 135th St. and 12th Ave. There were about 100 phones in "various states of decay" behind a chain link fence, he says.