Abandoned telephone exchange/school Chicago

Chicago Telephone Company Kedzie Exchange - Roetgen School, Chicago Illinois

Date added: June 15, 2023

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Designed by the Chicago architects Irving K. Pond (1857-1939) and Allen B. Pond (1858-1929) and constructed in 1906-1907, with major additions designed in 1913, 1928, and 1948 by Holabird & Roche, the Classical Revival style Kedzie Exchange of the Chicago Telephone Company is a representative example of the neighborhood telephone exchanges built in Chicago at the turn of the twentieth century. Hiring, training, and retaining thousands of skilled switchboard operators proved central to the Chicago Telephone Company's efforts to build its business. Pond & Pond responded to this need by designing a novel workplace that they thought would be especially attractive to the largely female workforce. When architectural critic Russell Sturgis attacked the decorative character of one of Pond & Pond's exchange designs, Irving Pond defended his work arguing that the presence of the female employees doing stressful work necessitated the company's attention to beauty and social welfare. Pond illustrated the published defense of his work with both interior and exterior views of the Kedzie Exchange. By building fine civic buildings in Chicago neighborhoods the telephone company and its architects also sought to win the confidence of the general public and of city officials who presided over the company's position as a publicly regulated, but privately owned, utility operating with a monopoly franchise. Pond & Pond helped establish key elements of the building type that later proliferated under the guidance of the Chicago architecture firm of Holabird & Roche. In the 1960s changes in telephone technology and service permitted the telephone company to retire the Kedzie Exchange. The substantial civic nature of the building's architecture undoubtedly contributed to the decision of the Chicago School Board to adaptively re-use the building for the Wilhelm K. Roentgen Elementary School, a use that continued into the 1990s.

Telephones were first introduced in Chicago in 1877. Over the next several decades telephone use expanded exponentially. In 1880 there were 2,971 telephones in service in Chicago; in 1890 there were 7,766; 1900, 34,414; 1910, 239,088; 1920, 557,981. The success of the Chicago Telephone Company seemed a marvel of technological development. However, this technology did not unfold without the marshaling of massive human resources and talent. The telephone company ran copper lines from individual subscribers' phones to telephone poles and then into underground conduits and vaults that carried up to 600 lines in a single cable. These lines were all routed through the neighborhood telephone exchange, which served as the technological and human nerve center of the entire telephone system. For subscribers to make telephone calls they were required to call the operator at the local telephone exchange. Responding to a glowing light on the switchboard the operator had to field the call, contact the party being called, and then connect the two lines; or, alternatively, the operator had to call an operator at another exchange for connection with the party being called. As soon as the call terminated the operator had to manually disconnect the line. Every call had to be routed through distributing frames and switchboards at local telephone exchanges. Telephone operators were an absolutely essential part of the telephone system; they were put in place to guard against a calling bottleneck at the local exchange. The success of telephone technology in Chicago and elsewhere required thousands of trained and efficient operators who formed what historian Kenneth Lipartito characterizes as a "techno-labor" system. The communication system required not only novel jobs, like that of the operator, but also a novel architecture, the telephone exchange. As the system developed, the position and status of the operator influenced the architectural character of the telephone exchange.

The fact that telephone operators were almost exclusively women was a key to their influence on telephone exchange design. Quite early in the development of the telephone business, executives turned to women to fill the ranks of operators. The Victorian stereotype of "feminine" character as being patient, polite, gentle, respectful, careful, and helpful meant that it was assumed that women would be better suited than men to deal with often cranky and irritable telephone customers frustrated by the pitfalls of a new technology. The need for well-honed communications skills and for working at fairly complex tasks meant that operators would be paid more than female domestics and factory operatives." It also meant that the women would be drawn from the educated middle class or from the ranks of upwardly mobile working-class families. A particular public and corporate solicitousness concerning working conditions followed these particular women into the workplace. Moreover, the skilled nature and at times stressful conditions of their work meant that the telephone operators had to be trained by the telephone company that then, in turn, sought ways of retaining their trained employees. Operators did not reach peak productivity for three or four years, thus high turnover rates proved a special concern for the company.

The Chicago Telephone Company and other telephone companies around the country put in place a regimen of corporate paternalism. In 1903, Theodore Vail, president of American Telephone & Telegraph Company promised to provide customers with a "voice with a smile." He understood that the cooperation of the employees was absolutely necessary to implement such a promise of service and he charted a comprehensive welfare system of pension, sickness and disability benefits, and insurance. An architectural component of this welfare policy toward women workers manifested itself in the design of neighborhood telephone exchanges.

Chicago's first telephone exchange opened in 1878 in rented space in a LaSalle Street building just north of Madison Street. In the early years the exchanges of the Chicago Telephone Company were located in rented space or in fairly simple utilitarian structures. The design approach changed in the 1890s and took on a more monumental civic aspect when the Chicago Telephone Company commissioned Daniel H. Burnham to design a series of exchanges for the company's expanding network. Having served as the supervising architect for the World's Columbian Exposition, Burnham stood in an ideal position to impart a civic aspect to the exchange building. This development proved particularly important given the Chicago Telephone Company's status as a privately owned, publicly regulated, monopoly franchise. The company appreciated that it needed to serve the public and win the favor of local city officials if its franchise was to be renewed. Moreover, the company understood that one way to increase business was to increase the desirability of Chicago as a place to live and work; attention to beautiful architecture, with its suggestion that Chicago could afford such embellishment, was one way that many residents and businesses tried to boost Chicago's fortunes. As technological buildings, which some people classified as factories, the telephone company also stood to benefit from cultivating the civic, as opposed to the industrial aspect, of the exchange building. The exchange building would undoubtedly meet with more ready acceptance in residential neighborhoods if it assumed a less industrial or utilitarian aspect. Burnham, as one of the leading proponents of the City Beautiful Movement, certainly appreciated the possibilities that a series of telephone exchanges held for civic embellishment of Chicago.

Burnham's Chicago Telephone Company exchanges took on a fairly definite form; they were generally two-story, classical-style, brick buildings, entered through a pedimented doorway, and topped by heavy cornices, often decorated with medallions, swags, and corbeled brackets. Burnham's Chicago Telephone Company commissions included the Lake View, Englewood, Superior, Yards, Seeley, and, possibly, the Hyde Park exchanges. Of these buildings only the Yards Exchange, at 4122 S. Union, and the Superior Exchange, at 54 W. Chicago Avenue, are still standing.

The Yards Exchange, constructed in 1899, is among the most architecturally modest of the Burnham's designs for the Chicago Telephone Company. Its civic character was established primarily through the placement of massive keystones over the windows. Located in a wealthier North Side neighborhood, the Superior Exchange, constructed in 1899, is the most distinguished of the Burnham-designed exchanges to survive, though its exterior was sand-blasted.

For a few years in the early 1900s, the Chicago Telephone Company turned to an in-house architect to design its exchanges. In 1902, Chauncey G. Hellick, the company's "chief draftsman," designed the two-story brick Canal Exchange at the northeast corner of Laflin and West 19^th Street; in 1903 Hellick designed the two-story brick Austin Exchange at 415 N. Central. These designs followed the simple lines of Burnham's Yards Exchange, making effective use of stone keystones to establish the civic nature of the building. The facade of the Austin Exchange has been obscured in connection with its remodeling as a church. The Canal Exchange was substantially enlarged and is now used as a church; its basic simple civic character is still apparent.

Burnham's designs of the 1890s clearly staked out the broad civic outline of the neighborhood telephone exchange. There is no evidence that Burnham explored or developed the exchange as a specifically gendered space or gave architectural form to the emerging social welfare policies of the telephone company. The exchanges designed by Pond & Pond were the first Chicago buildings recognized for their special attention to the welfare of the building's female workers. Pond & Pond, best known as the architects of Hull House and numerous other social clubs and settlements in Chicago, seemed ideally suited to push telephone exchange architecture beyond its civic dimensions into the realm of social welfare. Pond & Pond were also the first architects in Chicago focused on the special formal problems surrounding the constant need to physically expand telephone exchanges; they developed a provisional approach to design that gave the buildings an initial complete form even though they were conceived simply as the first phase of building.

After building the two-story Humboldt Exchange in 1904-1905, Pond & Pond developed a three-story telephone exchange model. The increase from two to three stories permitted a rigorous segregation of space by use and gender within the telephone exchange. The most notable addition was the design of third-floor "rest" room and eating facilities for female operators. Pond & Pond's new exchange model placed telephone cable conduits and vaults in the basement and the telephone line distributing frames and local operations office on the first floor. Male employees occupied these two levels. The operator switchboard was located on the second floor in a broad, well-lit, open floor plan. Switchboards lined the wall and windows above the switchboard and along the opposite wall illuminated the space. On the third floor, Pond & Pond placed the operators' "rest" room and dining facilities. These third-floor spaces became the focus of the company's efforts at attending to the social needs of their legions of female operators. Here, the space where operators took rest breaks stood in sharp contrast to the regimented lines of the switchboard floor. The third-floor rest room had all the fitting of a women's social club. It was furnished with comfortable couches, rocking chairs, oriental carpets, and a fireplace. The room had reading material and a small library. The walls were lined with art and sculpture. A dining space where meals were available to operators was also located on the third floor.

The use of the third-floor rest and dining area was a regular part of the operators' day. They worked for two hours at the switchboard and then took a fifteen-minute break. Then after another two hours at the switchboard, the operators took a forty-five-minute break. The afternoon again brought two, two-hour shifts with a fifteen-minute break in between. In the two-story Humboldt Exchange Pond & Pond did provide a rest room but it simply occupied the front section of the second floor, while the switchboard filled the rear part of the floor. What the three-story model did was introduce a more thoroughgoing specialization of the space within the exchange, throwing into greater prominence the movement toward creating a more humane workplace.

Efforts to address the welfare of women workers appeared in the design of building exteriors as well as in the program and design of exchange interiors. In the Kedzie Exchange, 1906-1907, Edgewater Exchange, 1906-1907, and in the Lincoln Exchange, 1907, Pond & Pond extended sills of the windows outside of the operators' restrooms to accommodate flower boxes, an element that Irving Pond insisted was a "common, almost general, feature of the buildings. They also placed floral motifs in the stair moldings. More generally, the architects designed handsomely ornamented exteriors. It was precisely this aspect of the design that ran afoul of the modernist critical standards of Russell Sturgis. Sturgis insisted that the embellished exterior of a Pond & Pond exchange and the use of historical architectural motifs violated the modern imperative for utility and simplicity in the design of "factories and warehouses." This characterization of the exchange as a factory or warehouse brought the sharpest retort from Irving Pond; it seemed to overlook the social welfare aspect of the female operators' spaces. Pond wrote,

"It is not so easy to tell just how far to carry ornamentation in any kind of a structure, utilitarian or otherwise. But the telephone exchange partakes of the nature of an office (in no sense a shop or factory) building and of club of girls, and such being the case I do not believe ornament or the element of beauty and domesticity are liked to be carried to a fatal extreme. It is not the function of the play of color or of the bits of caring about the entrances or of the bright flowers on the window ledges to command "Abandon hope all who enter here"; but rather the function is to invite to labor: "Come, work, rest, recreate and work again amid pleasant surroundings, and enjoy at least a bit of the beauty to which your work entitles you." From what we know of the highly wrought nerves of many of the telephone users … there is wisdom in providing for the operators these havens of rest in its telephone exchanges."

The design of the exchange, part technological hub, part civic embellishment, part club, and part "haven" was at the center of the new approach to the problem that Pond & Pond developed for the Chicago Telephone Company.

Besides building new exchanges, Pond & Pond also completed additions to the Englewood, Monroe, Canal, and Yards exchanges in 1906. The buildings that received the additions were only a matter of a few years old. This work clarified for Pond & Pond that any plans they made for new exchanges were at best contingent and provisional. The firm responded by actually anticipating later additions in the design and structure of their exchanges. Irving Pond declared that the firm knew that none of their buildings would remain the same; as initially completed they were "but a fragment of the design." Rather, Pond & Pond sought "to design the structure that addition and enlargement may be made with the least amount of alteration in or destruction of the existing portion, and to the end that the building may not present too unfinished an appearance in its temporary condition. At the Kedzie Exchange the piers between bays were clearly designed anticipating that with the addition of floors the piers would become colossal order pilasters. Burnham's exchange designs had lacked any such provision for additions. When Holabird & Roche later became the Chicago Telephone Company's primary architect they followed the model established by Pond & Pond of planning and building flexibly in anticipation of future additions. This approach to design represented another area of innovation that came from the Pond & Pond commissions for the Chicago Telephone Company.

The attention to women's social welfare and to design flexibility in no way deflected Pond & Pond from extending the basic civic identity that Burnham had given to the earlier exchanges. In fact, the period of 1905 to 1907 when Pond & Pond executed their exchanges were particularly turbulent times for the Chicago Telephone Company. The Illinois Supreme Court, for example, ordered the company to refund money that it had overcharged its customers for toll calls. In the wake of the ruling the Economist reported the city's "movements against the company … have been anything but friendly." This came at the same time that city council negotiations opened about the twenty-year extension of the company's franchise, due to expire in 1909. One aspect of the franchise discussion was a call for a reduction in rates, greater regulation, and a provision that the city itself would have the option of buying the telephone company after a number of years. In 1904 the telephone committee of the City Club of Chicago supported the notion that the telephone business was a "natural monopoly;" but it balked at recommending a franchise renewal for the Chicago Telephone Company without careful scrutiny of competing proposals. The Chicago Telephone Company countered this with an aggressive public relations and lobbying campaign. When telephone exchanges were "cut-over" the telephone company arranged special dedication ceremonies with distinguished local residents and city officials. The buildings themselves served as part of the public relations campaigns; the public was always invited to visit the local exchange. The restrooms were featured; treating women operators well fit the broader strategy of building favorable public sentiment while at the same time holding onto trained and valued employees in an industry that had quite high rates of turnover.

Pond & Pond worked for the Chicago Telephone Company for a relatively short time. The Holabird firm designed telephone exchanges for close to forty years. Nevertheless, Pond & Pond did work of great interest that established the broad outlines of design solutions that influenced numerous subsequent designs. The care with which the Holabird firm expanded the Kedzie Exchange in 1913 and in 1928, first by adding a floor and later by substantially expanding the front facade, suggests something of the aesthetic importance of the model that Pond & Pond established in 1906. Holabird & Roche worked to line up key elements of the facade and to carefully integrate the addition. The character of the original design is readily apparent on the exterior, and the integration of later additions worked along many of the lines that Pond & Pond initially anticipated. The Kedzie Exchange nicely anticipates Holabird & Roche's later Chicago Telephone Company exchanges. When Holabird & Roche's new Hyde Park Exchange was completed in 1915 its plan, layout, and spatial segregation were described as typical, but it followed the model established earlier by Pond & Pond. Although many of the Holabird & Roche exchanges were larger and more monumental than the Pond & Pond buildings they did not fundamentally alter the model that Pond & Pond had introduced to Chicago. Embellished exteriors, with a civic aspect, restrooms for the operators, and the careful specialization of spaces in the buildings were hallmarks of the later buildings.

Major exchanges that Pond & Pond designed in Chicago have been demolished, including the Lincoln, Oakland, and Drexel exchanges. Unfortunately, the Holabird & Roche additions to Pond & Pond's Humboldt Exchange, located at 1513 N. Western Avenue, were not as sympathetic as the additions to the Kedzie Exchange; the additions, for example, involved the demolition of the highly embellished original entrance that had provoked Sturgis's critical ire. Besides the Kedzie and Humboldt exchanges, only Pond & Pond's Edgewater Exchange has survived to the present. The Edgewater Exchange at 1470-1472 Carmen Avenue, had two additional stories added by Holabird & Roche and has been converted into a hospital. Since Holabird & Roche designed a major new Edgewater Exchange in the 1920s a few blocks away, the Pond & Pond design lacks the longer history of addition and its parts are not as readily apparent as they are in the Kedzie Exchange; the L-shaped plan, for example, with the narrower rear wing, designed to permit abundant light in the switchboard area is not evident in the Edgewater Exchange. The Kedzie Exchange is not only a good example of its type it is the best-preserved building to survive from the series of innovative exchange designs undertaken by the firm of Pond & Pond.

Building Description

Designed by Pond & Pond in 1906, the Chicago Telephone Company Kedzie Exchange stands just south of Chicago's Garfield Park at 17 South Homan Avenue. The Chicago Telephone Company Kedzie Telephone Exchange was initially an L-shaped building, with a three-story section extending 48 feet along South Homan Avenue, and a two-story rear wing. The depth of the initial building was 95 feet. A series of subsequent building additions made by the Chicago firm of Holabird & Roche in 1913, 1928, and 1948 gave the building a rectangular plan centered upon an interior court, open to the sky. The 1913 addition raised the Homan Avenue elevation to four stories. A three-story 1928 addition, which adopted the primary compositional lines of the original building, extended the facade to the south an additional 35 feet. The building's series of additions reflected the rapid increase in the telephone company's business. The building's structure is fireproof of concrete and structural steel with an exterior facade of stone and common bond brick. Sections of the interior, which had an open floor plan, were divided into separate rooms in connection with the building's 1960s adaptive reuse as a Chicago public school. Nevertheless, the character of the original open floor plan is still evident on the third and fourth floors in the spaces used for the school's lunch room and the gymnasium. The classroom partitions are made of concrete block. Many of the building's original windows, both wood and metal frame, are still in place. The roof is flat and constructed of asphalt. Designed in the Classical Revival style, the Kedzie Exchange has a nicely developed civic form, which made its subsequent development as a school seem particularly appropriate.

The Kedzie Exchange rises four stories to the north and three stories to the south above an English basement. The Classical Revival brick facade rises from a stone foundation; the brick pattern that has five brick courses alternate with single recessed courses gives the lower facade its rusticated appearance. A stone dentilled cornice with a diamond relief pattern on the front tops the first story from the central door to the north; a more restrained belt course extends from the door to the south across the 1928 addition. The northern half of this building extending from just south of the entrance originally rose three floors and was designed by Pond & Pond in 1906. The second and third floors are marked with the corner quoins of the original building, including the ones just to the south of the main entrance which, with the 1928 addition came to stand in the center rather than on the corner of the facade. Originally, the facade's top included a parapet wall with a crown that carried a stone bell in relief and below a plaque that stated Chicago Telephone Company set off on either side by two diamonds; these features were eliminated with the addition of the fourth floor in 1913. To the south, the building rises in three floors, which were completed in 1928 by Holabird & Roche in a style that follows the broad outlines of Pond & Pond's original design.

The Homan Avenue facade is divided into five bays with the middle bay containing the entrance to the building with a flight of stone steps that were arranged parallel to the building's facade. Above this bay and on either end are single double-hung one-over-one windows. The two bays flanking the entrance contain a triple set of double-hung one-over-one windows. The stone foundation has three half windows to either side of the entrance. The entrance's double doors are capped by a compass-headed window, and a large rounded stone arch with elaborate moldings that spring from two scrolled corbels with decorative flowers on the side, enhancing the visual prominence of the doorway. The two lighting fixtures that originally flanked the entryway are no longer in place. All the windows are capped with flat jack arches, and are marked with a stone dentil lintel on the top and a smooth stone sill on the bottom. The windows on the third floor to either side of the central quoining are connected with a projecting stone sill that was specially designed to hold flower boxes. Between each of the slightly recessed north side windows on the third and fourth floors are brick piers, which serve as a colossal order. The building was originally designed so that it could receive a later fourth-floor addition. This was completed in 1913 by Holabird & Roche; repeating the earlier window treatments, continuing the quoins, extending the piers into a colossal order without capitals, and adding a decorative stone entablature that runs above the fourth-story windows. The fourth-floor addition required the removal of the parapet wall crown; now an elaborate flat stone cornice with projecting corbels is carried across the 1913 top of the building on the north side and a plain stone cornice projects above the building facade's 1928 south section.

The building's north side elevation rises four floors and extends east in eight bays. Each bay is marked with a double-hung one-over-one window, set with a slightly rounded arch and a stone sill. Between the first and second floor there is a plain stone stringcourse that wraps around the building. The English basement is marked with a series of eight half windows at the base of each bay. From the exterior changes in brick, the 1906 section of the building is visible; it extended east five bays on the first two floors and only two bays on the third floor. This lighter common red brick contrasts with the deep red of the finished brick on the Homan facade as well as the darker red brick of the 1928 addition. The 1913 addition added three additional bays to the east end, completing the eight-bay side, and raised the height to four stories from the front elevation to the rear.

The building's rear, or east, elevation extends across six bays and its four floors high. It was completed in 1913 and creates an additional L-shaped extension to the south. The bays contain double-hung, three-over-three windows set with curved arches with half windows at the foundation matching those on the north elevation. The stringcourse between the first and second floors from the north elevation across the east elevation. The third bay from the south contains a series of larger spaces that have been boarded, and a modern steel fire escape extends between the first and second bays at the southeast corner of the building. On the first floor below the fourth bay from the south is a large entrance that has been boarded up. Not as elaborately detailed as the Homan facade entrance, this rear entrance was added in 1913 addition as a secondary entrance to the new section of the building.

The south facade is the building's most visually varied elevation. From the west proceeding to the east, the building rises three floors in three bays, then rises two stories in two bays and finally rises four floors in two bays. These sections correlate to the different building campaigns, dating, from west to east, to 1928, 1948, and 1913. The elevation is integrated together through the use of the stringcourse between the first and second stories. On the 1928 section, the bays are composed of double-hung, three-over-three windows with a flat jack arch and projecting lower stone sills. The 1948 section contains one bay with double hung, one-over-one windows with a flat jack arch and small lower stone sills, and a second bay with doors on both floors. On the exterior connecting these doors is a modern steel fire escape that extends from the roof to the ground. The 1913 section is two bays wide and has double-hung, three-over-three windows set with curved jack arches and stone sills. As with the north and east sides of the building, there is limited decorative treatment on this side of the building and no embellished cornice.

The interior of the 1906 telephone exchange contained a wide-open floor plan with wire conduits and cable vaults in the basement, the exchange frame room and operations office on the first floor, the operator switchboard stations on the second floor, and a rest area and dining room on the third floor. The public entry vestibule from the main doorway contains an elegant coved wood ceiling with elaborate moldings and wood paneling on the walls. Many of the original wood doors in the building are still in place. The 1906 stairway, which provided the first circulation route to the various floors, is located just through the main doorway in the southwest corner of the original building. The stairway connecting each floor consists of three runs of iron steps turning three times up to a large landing. The original railings and newel posts are in place and contain decorative floral patterns that were repeated elsewhere in the building's decorative program. Attached to the east side of the stairway an elevator provided additional vertical circulation.

A north-south corridor runs just east of the elevator core. This corridor approximately 7 feet wide and extending about 20 feet south served as the connection to the new 1928 building addition. Built east of the exterior walls of the 1906 building this hallway has a separate roof on the first floor. Its hallway is illuminated by a series of double-hung, three-over-three windows on the east side set with flat jack arches that overlook the interior court. With the addition of this corridor some windows on the south side of the 1906 building were removed although remnants of the curved jack arches can be seen in the interior court. Proceeding from this corridor to the north another hallway is reached. This one continues east approximately 60 feet with double-hung two-over-two windows along the interior court. Originally this area of the building contained a wide-open plan, which was later converted into a library and two classrooms when the building was adaptively re-used as a school. In the north section of the building on the second story, the floor space contained the switching terminals, and correspondingly the windows are located at a slightly higher level in order to allow light to filter in above the switchboards and operators; this space on the second floor was converted into three classrooms. Throughout the interior, the large windows contain wood surrounds with slightly projecting lower sills. The third floor in this section originally contained a lounge or restroom with a fireplace that operators used while taking their breaks. The fireplace and mantelpiece are no longer in place; the restroom's beamed ceiling and the original fixtures in the adjacent bathroom are still in place. Continuing east along the east-west corridor the rear 1913 section of the building is reached. This section also had an open floor plan that is still in place on the third floor. With this addition, a secondary vertical circulation pattern was established with another staircase. The staircase encompasses the space overlooking the interior court on the west side of the 1913 addition. The windows on the stairway are double-hung, two-over-two and three-over-three windows. This stairway and supplementary hallway served to connect the 1906 section of the building with the later 1948 section.

On the south side of the interior court, a fourth corridor provides the final link in the circulation system. This corridor approximately 7 feet wide and 30 feet long unites the north-south corridor from the western side of the interior court with the stair and hallway of the eastern side of the court. In this area of the building, the first and second-floor space was divided into three main classrooms on both the first and second floors. As with the others, this corridor contains double-hung three-over-three windows that are on the north side of the corridor. These windows unlike most in the building do not have elaborate wood surrounds, but are just set in the brick walls.

In the 1960s, when the exchange was phased out, the building was adapted for use as the Wilhelm K. Roentgen Public School. It remained a public school into the 1990s when it was closed. In creating the public school many of the open areas were divided into smaller sections to serve as classrooms. The kitchen and lunchroom areas on the third floor and the fourth-floor gymnasium still reflect the open character of the earlier floor plan; added to the building in 1913 these spaces originally accommodated additional switchboards. The basement still has in place major sections of conduit pipe and cable vaults that carried the telephone wire to the exchange's first-floor frame and switchboards on the upper floors.

Currently, the building is vacant and in a deteriorated, though structurally sound, condition. Most of the windows are still intact although some on the first floor have been boarded or bricked up for security. The building carefully delineates the various expansions and transitions that the phone company went through as well as the early intent to make these buildings fit in with the neighborhood. Even though the various expansions and the later adaptive re-use of the building brought changes to its architectural form, the building maintains a high degree of its original historic and architectural integrity and the various changes serve to highlight the expansion of technology and telephone service in the twentieth century as well as reflecting how major utilities adapted a civic style into their architecture. This civic form and utilitarian open plan was easily appropriated for use by the Chicago Public School Board. Plans are now being pursued to renovate the building.