The Acquisition of a Northern Electric MD9021 "Superman Booth"

When I started setting up the Telephone Museum of Prince Edward Island, I wanted a telephone booth to sit outside the museum. I contacted a gentleman at Island Tel about perhaps finding one, and eventually in August 2005, I got a call from him that there was a booth being removed close to here at a cabin place which was closing down. We went to look at it, and to plan removal and to take some photos. This booth was missing two of its top signs, and door, and had a Centurion in place. Honest, misguided person I am, I called my contact to tell him that the phone was still in the booth. He arranged for one of his employees to come and remove the phone. Now, here is where the story got funny. The gentleman removed the cover of the phone, and the coin box, but then when he tried to remove the phone itself, disccovered one of the studs wouldn't come out. So, the removed the upper section, and took the cover and coin box, and left the rest of the phone tthere.

Well! Later that day, the elderly lady who owned the cabin place called the police and told them we had taken the phone! Of course, such was not the case, the telephone company had taken all but what was left of it for spare parts, and left the booth with only the red back section of the phone in the booth. I called my contact, and told him what she had done. He straightened her and the police out. During that conversation, I casually mentioned the door was missing..

The next day, I, Linda, Jeffery and a cousin of here came to get the booth. Its mounting bolts which held it down to the concrete slab were rusty and twisted out of the concrete when we tried to remove them, but eventually, we got the booth loose and tipped it into out pickup truck, taking it home, and temporarily put it in our barn.

This is the booth recovered from that location. Because of later events (see below), this booth has remained in our barn since Aug 30 2005. It is in the way, and I want to keep it within the collecting community. It is available to any collector who happens to be visiting the Island with a suitable truck to take it. Price is free, but it would be nice to have some little token such as a phone, or switching part(s) to remember it by. It is still in the same condition as shown in this photo. Note there are no doors. The doors on these has a tendancy of breaking, so as they did, the phone company simply removed them, and left the booth minus doors in service. In the years these were in use her, one seldom saw one with a door. It is also missing two of its lucite Island Tel signs - these can be replaced with pieces of white lucite. If interested, let me know at [email protected]

 

Two months later, we got another call from our contact. Because of the reduction of number of booths in service, the company was preparing to scrap a number of booths they had in a storage facility in King's County. I went up and chose another MD9021 with its doors. They promised to deliver it. Below lies a photo log of the day the telephone company delivered that second booth complete with its concrete base and doors. I should mention that I already has one of the last three MD9021s on the Island, and this one was the only one left on P.E.I. with doors. Sadly, the rest of the booths in that facility were broken down and sold for scrap.

		On Oct 14 2005, the booth arrived, concrete base still attached. It came on a trailer on the back of a pickup truck , along with two gentlemen, and with a set of rollers.
		The booth was worked to the back of the truck, then eased onto the rollers.
		The booth was eased onto the ground using lots of braun - remember the concrete base was very heavy, perhaps double the actual weight of the booth itself. To give you an idea of the actual weight we were easing down the rollers, the both itself weighs nearly 400 lbs.
		A gentle nudge from my tractor fine tunes its positioning on the ground.

Here are photos after installation, the one on the left of the booth during its first night here, and on the right, several months later with another black Northern Electric Centurion mounted in it.

The Telephone Museum of Prince Edward Island: https://www.islandregister.com/phones/museum.html