Our history: Cincinnati Bell service is older than the telephone
Published Sept. 8, 2013.
Cincinnati Bell’s recent plans to transform itself into a technology and entertainment provider doesn’t mean it is hanging up on phones completely. Voice service will still be a part of the company’s offerings, along with television and high-speed Internet access.
There was a time, though, when it didn't provide phone service at all.
That’s because the company, which turned 140 this year, actually predates the invention of the telephone.
Alexander Graham Bell spoke the first words transmitted by telephone (“Mr. Watson – come here – I want to see you.”) in his Boston laboratory on March 10, 1876. The origins of Cincinnati Bell go back a bit further than that as a telegraph company in 1873.
The Kilgour brothers, John and Charles, were wealthy streetcar magnates and real estate developers. Together they ran the Cincinnati Street Railway Co. and helped build up Hyde Park and Mount Lookout.
Charles Kilgour had been left partially disabled when he was thrown from his buggy by a horse spooked by the steam dummy train he owned. Kilgour became mostly homebound and required a clerk to relay messages to his businesses.
The clerk, Thomas Bell, suggested that Kilgour install a telegraph line from his home at Third and Kilgour streets to his office. The experiment was such a success that Kilgour created a company to set up telegraph lines for other businesses.
On July 5, 1873, Kilgour was granted a charter for the City and Suburban Telegraph Association. He set up telegraph poles and wires all over town, which was to become fortuitous a few years later.
In July 1877, James O. Shiras demonstrated Alexander Bell’s new invention to Cincinnati businessmen in Kilgour’s study. They were all quite impressed with the telephone, and Kilgour was quick to invest in it. City and Suburban owned most of the telegraph poles, which could also be used for telephones. The company hired Shiras as a salesman to convince their customers to add telephone service.
The company – with “Telephonic Exchange” tacked onto its name – was the first telephone company in Ohio and the 10th in the nation. It became an exclusive franchise with the Bell Telephone Co. in Boston.
John Kilgour had the first working phone line, running from his home, the Pines estate in Hyde Park, to his Franklin Bank office at Third and Walnut streets. John Kilgour was president of the telephone company from 1901 to 1912.
The first customer to sign up for a phone line was Cincinnati Gas Light & Coke Co., on Aug. 21, 1877.
The switchboard at the telephone exchange at 122 W. Fourth St. near Walnut was built and installed by Thomas A. Watson, Alexander Graham Bell's assistant who had heard that historic telephone call.
To make a call then, one first rang the exchange and told the operator the number of the party one wished to reach. Then, either the party would come on the line or the operator would inform the caller the party was “busy” or didn’t answer.
In 1883, the Cincinnati company entered into a perpetual contract with American Bell, now known as AT&T, for long-distance service, which was about a 100-mile radius at the time.
City and Suburban became Cincinnati and Suburban Bell Telephone Co. in 1903, and simply Cincinnati Bell Inc. in 1971.
‘Telephone building’ noted for Art Deco details
The Cincinnati and Suburban Bell Telephone Co. Building at 209 W. Seventh St., at the corner of Elm, opened in 1931. Cincinnati Bell’s 12-story operating building was designed by prominent local architect Harry Hake Sr., the designer of Crosley Field.
The “telephone building,” known for the telephones carved in the limestone façade, is one of the earliest examples of Art Deco in the city. The design is fairly utilitarian except for the striking decorative details on the lower floors, starting with the marble layer at street level.
As a counter to the stylized classic figures in bas-relief, the second-story frieze has a border of carved high-reliefs that alternate French telephones and headsets.
The entranceways feature bronze metalwork and ornate hanging lamps. The metal accents, including various metal panels depicting telephone workers and decorative chrome nickel steel elevator doors, were done by famed metalworker Oscar Bach, who did similar work in the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building and Radio City Music Hall in New York City.
The floors were built 12 feet high to accommodate the tall telephonic equipment. When the building opened, it housed the world's largest straight switchboard with stations for 88 telephone operators.
The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.
The first Cincinnati telephone directory was printed in 1879, with 500 listings and warnings against the use of “profane, obscene or improper language.”
Women operators known as “hello girls” replaced men on the switchboard in 1884 because customers complained the men had been rude.
The city’s first outdoor pay phone debuted in 1905 on Fifth Street in front of the Joseph R. Peebles’ Sons Co. grocery store between Walnut and Main.
The company completed conversion to dial service in 1952, having begun in 1930.
The two-letter exchange (such as CApital for Walnut Hills) and five-digit number was replaced by a seven-digit number in 1962.
Cincinnati Bell and Southern New England Telephone were the only two independent companies in the Bell System because American Bell owned only minority shares in them. Cincinnati Bell is the last of them to use the Bell name.