Trish, I believe you will find if you check that the exchange by 60th and Dorchester was known as the Dorchester exchange - it was still referred to that way by the Ameritech/SBC/Illinois Bell technicians that I dealt with over the years. I can't tell you what the other exchanges serving Hyde Park and Kenwood would be...I know that here in Kenwood, my service comes through a central office switch somewhere farther north and west.
Hi, yes, thanks for commenting. I cut it out because the item felt long also perhaps confusing because exchange meant the mechanics but also the telephone prefixes. The building handled 8 exchanges: Dorchester, Fairfax, Plaza, Butterfield, Hyde Park, Midway, Museum, and Normal. They originally used the first three letters but went down to the first two and five numbers. You can see them in the old ads.
A note on mail service: when I lived in Paris in 1977, a year when Hyde Park mail was being dumped into Lake Michigan, I got mail whenever it came in. One day I got mail 4 times!!
Trish, I believe you will find if you check that the exchange by 60th and Dorchester was known as the Dorchester exchange - it was still referred to that way by the Ameritech/SBC/Illinois Bell technicians that I dealt with over the years. I can't tell you what the other exchanges serving Hyde Park and Kenwood would be...I know that here in Kenwood, my service comes through a central office switch somewhere farther north and west.
Hi, yes, thanks for commenting. I cut it out because the item felt long also perhaps confusing because exchange meant the mechanics but also the telephone prefixes. The building handled 8 exchanges: Dorchester, Fairfax, Plaza, Butterfield, Hyde Park, Midway, Museum, and Normal. They originally used the first three letters but went down to the first two and five numbers. You can see them in the old ads.
Fascinating!
A note on mail service: when I lived in Paris in 1977, a year when Hyde Park mail was being dumped into Lake Michigan, I got mail whenever it came in. One day I got mail 4 times!!