Red telephone box
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A K6 red telephone box in Oxford |
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
Malta, 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 â€" in reinforced concrete â€" 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.
|
A telephone booth as seen in the City of London. |
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
Scotland, after the coronation of
Queen Elizabeth II — who is the
first Queen Elizabeth in Scotland — an issue was found with the crown cast into the top of the box. The crown was not applicable to a Scots monarch. From the mid-1950s, a slot was cut into the area, allowing an iron plate bearing the appropriate crown to be inserted appropriate to the part of the
United Kingdom in which the box would be installed.
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 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,
USA, where they continue to serve their originally intended function. Elsewhere in the
USA, a few have also been installed in downtown
Glenview, Illinois. There is also a red telephone box in the student centre of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Red telephone boxes are also found in villages in
Malta and
Gozo, showing that the colonial influence is still present. Some of telephone booths are being used as
internet kiosks.
Kingston upon Hull is the only city in the UK not under the BT monopoly and hence no red telephone boxes will be seen in the city. Instead, cream coloured ones are used by the local telecoms company, Kingston Communications.
*
Cream telephone boxes in Kingston Upon Hull*
Telephone booth*
Payphone*
Pillar box (red UK postal box)
*
Routemaster (red UK bus)
*
Police box (blue UK police phone box)
* Gavin Stamp -
Telephone Boxes (Chatto & Windus, 1989) ISBN 070113366X
* Neil Johannessen -
Telephone Boxes (Shire, 1994 - 1st Edn; 1999 - 2nd Edn) ISBN 0747804192
*
Gallery of UK telephone kiosks*
National Telephone Kiosk Collection*
Unicorn Kiosk Restorations*
Pictorial Guide to UK Telephone boxes*
Telephone Box website*
Kiosk Korner website*
The Birmingham Civic Society website
