20th Century Phone Directories - Part 1

I recently found the U.S. Telephone Directory Collection on the Library of Congress website. The web address is: https://www.loc.gov/collections/united-states-telephone-directory-collection/. This collection contains telephone directories from a number of cities and states covering a good portion of the 20th Century. I found telephone directories for San Francisco; Los Angeles; and Colorado Springs. I will start with the telephone directories from San Francisco.

I will start with the Pru-Nut Creams store on 669 Geary Street. The store opened at 669 Geary Street in March of 1925, having moved from 871 Geary Street. The first telephone directory on the website is November of 1927. The image below is taken from the September 1933 Directory.

The phone number that is listed is FRanklin-0369. To dial the number, one would use the first two letters from the word Franklin, and then the four digits following the word. The phone number for the store changed in 1937. The image below is taken from the November 1937 Directory.

The phone number changed to TUxedo-0369. The candy store remained open through 1943, as the candy store is last found in the November 1943 directory. The candy box I have has the TUxedo-0369 phone number on it, which means that the candy box I have is between 80 and 86 years old.

Staying in San Francisco, we will now look at the telephone directories for David & Frances Nemetzky. They are first found in the August 1931 Telephone Directory. The phone directory for August 1931 is below.

Their phone number is WAlnut-2341. They are next found in the March 1936 Telephone Directory (the are not listed in the available directories for 1933-1935). By this time, their phone number had changed. The 1936 Telephone Directory is below.

Their phone number changed to WEst-5281. They would have the same phone number until 1946, when they moved to a different part of San Francisco. The November 1946 Telephone Directory is shown below.

With moving to a different address, their phone number once again changed, this time to MOntrose-7499. In 1947, an additional number was added. The August 1947 phone directory is shown below.

The phone number was now MOntrose 4-7499, which is the precursor to the seven digit phone number that would be implemented during the 1960's. Although David Nemetzky passed away in 1947, his wife continued to live in San Francisco through 1953, as she is last found in the July 1953 Telephone Directory.

The next post will look at additional telephone directories in California.