Prairie Grove Airlight Outdoor Telephone Booth, telephone booth installed at the southwest corner of East Douglas and Parker Streets in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, in the United States
The Prairie Grove Airlight Outdoor Telephone Booth is a metal and glass phone booth from around 1960, standing at the corner of East Douglas and Parker Streets in Prairie Grove, Arkansas. It sits on a concrete base, reaches just over 7 feet (about 2.1 meters) tall, and still holds an original-style telephone on an interior shelf below a fluorescent ceiling light.
The booth was put up around 1960 by the local phone company to serve travelers passing near a motel and a state park on the edge of town. It was one of four such booths installed at the time, and today it is the only one that has survived.
The name Airlight comes from the booth's aluminum frame and glass panels, which made it light enough to install outdoors without a foundation beyond a concrete pad. Today visitors can open the door, pick up the handset, and read the original instructional placard still mounted inside.
The booth sits at a street corner next to a motel and is easy to find and reach on foot from the road. Because it is now a landmark rather than a working phone, a short stop to walk up and look inside is the best way to appreciate it.
In 2015, this booth became the first outdoor telephone booth ever listed on the National Register of Historic Places. A car hit it in 2014 and left it badly bent and broken, but local residents repaired it by hand, straightening the frame and replacing the glass panel by panel.
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