Red telephone box
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Image:Red telephone boxes behind Young Dancer - Broad Street - London - 240404.jpg Image:London phone box.jpg The red telephone box, a public telephone kiosk designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, is a familiar sight on the streets of the United Kingdom, and despite a reduction in their numbers in recent years, red boxes can still be seen in many places. The rainy British climate necessitates protection of callers from the elements. The colour red was chosen to make them easy to spot.
The first standard public telephone kiosk introduced by the United Kingdom Post Office was produced in concrete in 1920 and was designated K1 (Kiosk No.1). This design was not of the same family as the familiar red telephone boxes.
The red telephone box was the result of a competition in 1924 to design a kiosk that would be acceptable to the London Metropolitan Boroughs which had hitherto resisted the Post Office's effort to erect K1 kiosks on their streets.
The Royal Fine Art Commission was instrumental in the choice of the British standard kiosk. Because of widespread dissatisfaction with the GPO’s design, the Metropolitan Boroughs Joint Standing Committee organised a competition for a superior one in 1923, but the results were disappointing. The Birmingham Civic Society then produced a design of its own – in reinforced concrete – but it was informed by the Director of Telephones that the design produced by the Office of the Engineer-in-Chief was preferred; as the Architects’ Journal commented, ‘no one with any knowledge of design could feel anything but indignation with the pattern that seems to satisfy the official mind.’ The Birmingham Civic Society did not give up and, with additional pressure from the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Town Planning Institute and the Royal Academy, the Postmaster General was forced to think again; and the result was that the RFAC organised a limited competition.
The organisers invited entries from three respected architects and, along with the designs from the Post Office and from the Birmingham Civic Society, the Fine Arts Commission judged the competition and selected the design submitted by Giles Gilbert Scott as the winner. The Post Office chose to make it in cast iron (Scott had suggested mild steel) and to paint it red (Scott had suggested silver, with a "greeny-blue" interior) and, with other minor changes of detail, Scott's design was brought into service as the Kiosk No.2 or K2.
From 1926 K2 was deployed in and around London and the K1 continued to be erected elsewhere.
K3 designed in 1930, again by Gilbert Scott was similar to K2 but was constructed from concrete and intended for nationwide use. Cheaper than the K2, it was still significantly more costly than the K1 and so that remained the choice for low-revenue sites. The standard colour scheme for both the K1 and the K3 was cream, with red glazing bars.
K4 (designed by the Post Office Engineering Department in 1927) incorporated a post box and machines for buying postage stamps on the exterior. Only 50 kiosks of this design were built.
K5 was a plywood construction introduced in 1934 and designed to be assembled and dismantled and used at exhibitions.
In 1935 K6 was designed to commemorate the silver jubilee of King George V. K6 was the first red telephone kiosk to be used extensively outside of London and many thousands were deployed in virtually every town and city, replacing most of the existing kiosks and establishing thousands of new sites. It has became a British icon, although it was not universally loved at the start. The red colour caused particular local difficulties and there were many requests for less visible colours. The red that is now much loved was then anything but and the Post Office was forced into allowing a less strident grey with red glazing bars scheme for areas of natural and architectural beauty. Ironically, some of these areas that have preserved their telephone boxes have now painted them red.
In 1959 architect Neville Conder was commissioned to design a new box. The K7 design went no further than the prototype stage. K8 introduced in 1968 was designed by Bruce Martin. It was used primarily for new sites, replacing earlier models only when they they needed relocating or had been damaged beyond repair. The K8 retained a red colour scheme, but it was a different shade of red. A slightly brighter 'Poppy Red', this went on to be the standard colour across all kiosks.
Upon the privatisation of Post Office Telephone's successor, British Telecom (BT), the KX100, a more utilitarian design, began to replace most of the existing boxes. Some 2000 boxes were given listed status and several thousand others were left on low-revenue mostly rural sites but many thousands of recovered K2 and K6 boxes were sold off. Some kiosks have been converted to be to used as shower cubicles in private homes. In Kingston upon Thames a number of old K6 boxes have been utilised to form a work of art resembling a row of fallen dominoes. The KX100 PLUS, introduced in 1996 featured a domed roof reminiscent of the familiar K2 and K6. Subsequent designs have departed significantly from the old style red telephone boxes.
Several of these distinctive telephone boxes have been installed on the Norman campus of the University of Oklahoma, where they continue to serve their originally intended function. A few have also been installed in downtown Glenview, Illinois, USA.
See also
References
- Gavin Stamp - Telephone Boxes (Chatto & Windus, 1989) ISBN 070113366X
- Neil Johannessen - Telephone Boxes (Shire, 1994 - 1st Edn; 1999 - 2nd Edn) ISBN 0747804192