West Office -- San Francisco

Reprinted from "INSULATORS - Crown Jewels of the Wire", August 1984, page 11

(The following picture and text are reprinted from the January-February 1983 issue of "The Information Desk" with permission of Telephone Museum, San Francisco, California.) 

The old office was established in 1878 and was numbered among the first exchanges in the world. In 1886 there were 3,500 subscribers served from 323 Pine Street, and the office was rapidly being taxed to capacity. 

In the late '80's old West was known as "4" office, handling numbers from 4000 to 4999. shortly afterwards the office moved to its new location at Pine and Steiner Streets and became known as West, one of the city's seven central offices.

Large Image (391 Kb)

The only exchange left in safe operating condition after the 1906 earthquake and fire was West Office. This office was luckily common battery and the cells were strong enough to last until three small gasoline charging sets were received from Portland, Los Angeles and Sacramento. The first line was run down Market Street and connected to the Oakland submarine cable.

Just before the fire there were 80,000 names in the directory. Ten days after the catastrophe, a new directory was issued with 30 names, all served from West Office. By 1927 the West building had been doubled in size and contained the West, Fillmore and Walnut offices, all manual.

Late in 1931 work was started on a new West office at Steiner and Pine Streets which would ultimately replace the old manual office across the street. The new office was equipped with three units of Panel dial equipment, equipped with 21,000 lines. In the mid-40's an addition was made to the building. In 1947 the first cross-bar equipment growth units with Jordan 7 and Walnut 2, were installed. The equipment was gradually expanded and replaced the panel equipment in 1975 and 1977. 

Another addition known as 2345 Pine Street was made in the early '70's. An Electronic Switching System was installed in this new building. It gradually replaced the cross-bar units and also by 1984 will have replaced all the lines at Larkin. About 90,000 customers using 15 prefixes are working out of this ESS office.