By Hunter Fuentes and Jon Stordahl
Number Please
South Coast News, March 22, 1951.
There is an impressive building on the southeast corner of Beach and Broadway. The large, two- story Moderne façade has no signage nor obvious front door. The city’s Geographic Information System (GIS) not only has no accessible planning or building files for the structure, it doesn’t show that a building is even there. There is a definite air of mystery. We had heard that it had something to do with GTE, the General Telephone and Electronics Corporation. That brought to mind rotary dials and officious operators, and the romantic party line entanglement of Rock Hudson and Doris Day in “Pillow Talk.” With only that thin lead to go on, we started digging.
Pillow Talk, 1959.
The first commercial telephone exchange in town opened in 1923 as the Laguna Beach Telephone Company. A January 22, 1926, article in Laguna Beach Life detailed plans of the firm to construct a new office at “Foster Avenue and Beach Street.” Built by local contractors, Thompson and Thompson, the original building fronted onto Beach, was 20 feet by 30 feet, had two full-time operators and a capacity to service 500 private phones and a lush garden between the building and Ocean Avenue. It was unclear exactly where it was built. Was there a “Foster Avenue” in 1926? Is “Foster” a misspelling of “Forest?” Was the building built on the site where the Hobie store is today or somewhere closer to Whole Foods? We got assistance from an old source and a new one. An obscure posting under “Legal Notice” in the July 28, 1928, edition of the Register mentioned “… the center line of Broadway, formerly Foster Street ….” So, Foster was an earlier name for Broadway. Accessing a 1931 aerial photo of downtown, we determined that the building was erected on the southeast corner of Beach and Broadway. A June 8, 1936, article in the Register announced an addition to the building to be constructed by Smith Construction. The addition would accommodate several additional operators needed to meet the growing demand for residential and commercial phone lines. A 1938 aerial photo confirmed the addition and substantiated the location.
Confident of the building’s site, the definitive answer to the structure’s history came from an article in the October 1994 newsletter of the Laguna Beach Historical Society. Written by Pauli Buzan, an early telephone operator for the Associated Telephone Company and Historical Society treasurer, she shared memories of her time working there. The newsletter featured a wonderful photo of a one-story building that is very similar to the ground floor of the existing structure. Buzan noted that a second story was eventually added to the original building. She noted that construction of the addition was supervised by William Griffith. The structure sits on the sandy soil of the Laguna Canyon Creek bed and the added weight of a second floor proved challenging. The project took nearly two years to complete. Griffith had to completely reconfigure the original façade; the bays are wider and additional windows were added. Whatever solution Mr. Griffith came up with worked; the building is still standing 75 years later. We found a March 22, 1951, ad in the South Coast News that announced the grand opening of the “attractive new quarters” of the Associated Telephone Company. The ad includes a sketch of the building at Beach and Broadway.
The building as it stands today in 2025. Photo / Hunter Fuentes
Pauli Buzan traced the evolution of telephone service. Early calls required operator assistance; long distance calls were more complicated. A customer would tell the operator the number they wanted to reach, then “… a teletypist would telegraph the information to Santa Ana where the call was completed and when the party you wanted was on the line, the operator in Santa Ana would call back and connect you.” Direct dial eventually eliminated the need for most operator assistance and made the original purpose of the Broadway building obsolete. A few months ago, we chanced upon an open door at the old telephone building and were able to take a quick peek inside. The exterior windows have been covered and the building is filled with Verizon equipment.
While no operators sit at switchboards and greet callers with the familiar refrain, “Number please,” there is still a magic to the impressive old building and its long-forgotten purpose. Virginia Woolf once observed, “The telephone, which interrupts the most serious conversations and cuts short the most weighty observations, has a romance of its own.
