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 MISSOURI TELEPHONE CENTRAL OFFICE'S

 

Central offices of Missouri.  More to come......

PAGE 2

FLAT RIVER

 

 Flat River houses a No. 5 ESS switch.  Although the office code is "Flat River" the town changed its name to Park Hills about six years ago, yet CO kept its original designation.

FREDRICKTOWN

 

 Houses a Lucent No. 5ESS Remote Switching Module hosted by the Farmington 5ESS host.  This office is very difficult to find because the center of town is the traditional town square which can be entered from north, south east or west, on Main street.  Fredricktown is the county seat of Madison County (not the one with the bridges).

Old Exchanges: STerling

FULTON

 

 It is home to a remote hosted by the Eldon No. 5 ESS.  Fulton is the town in which Winston Churchill gave his famous "Iron curtain" speech.

Old Exchanges: MIdway 2

FAYETTE

 

 Office sits in a small college town not very far from the State University in Columbia.  It serves Central Methodist College.

GIDEON

 

 Houses an Erricson remote switch hosted by the AXE10 in Kennett, MO.  It serves the 1111 population of this boot heel town.


GREY SUMMIT

Houses a Remote Switch module hosted by the Chesterfield 5ESS.  This is a small farming community west of St. Louis county.  It is a cinder block building which has been painted with an unusual light blue paint.

HANNIBAL

 

 Houses a DMS100 switch which is the host for the SBC northeast, MO cluster.  Over the door is a piece of stone with the old Bell System logo in bas relief and the company name chiseled into it.  Hannibal was, of course, the childhood home of Samuel Clemens and Molly Brown (unsinkable).

Old Exchanges: ACadmey

HARVESTER

 

 Houses a DMS100 switch and a 5ESS remote switch module for ISDN services hosted by the Chestnut Central Office in St. Louis.

Old Exchanges: NAtional and HIlltop

HAYTI

 

 Houses an Ericson remote hosted by the AXE10 in Kennett, Missouri.  It is another building which is on the New Madrid fault which could not itself be reinforced to resist earthquakes.  So SBC used the same solution here that was pioneered at New Madrid, the earthquake resistant steel frame cage.  I cannot determine why they covered the majority of the front facade with a steel wall, something not done in New Madrid.

Old Exchanges: FLeetwood

HIGH RIDGE

 

 High Ridge is home to a remote switch which is hosted by the Fenton, MO No. 5ESS.

HILLSBORO

 

 Remote switch, serving the Jefferson County seat.

HORNERSVILLE

 

 Houses an Erricson remote switch hosted by the Kennett AXE10.  This serves a town with just under 700 population in 2006.  Again, the building had to be externally earthquake braced in the New Madrid manner.

HORSESHOE BEND

 

 This office was built in 1999. The growth of high end residential and the businesses to support it, dictated the addition of a new remote switch module. It simply became uneconomical to deploy any additional Digital Loop Carrier. It is home to a No5ESS Remote Switch module hosted by Eldon, Missouri.  This is a weird name for a CO.  There is no town in Missouri named Horseshoe Bend, this is named after a location on the “Lake of the Ozarks”.

HOUSE SPRINGS

 

 This is actually an old farm house with no plumbing.  (Note the "Johnny-on-the-spot" behind the utility pole at the left of the office.)  This office once housed a 355 CDO step by step switch for a couple of hundred subscribers.  The floor had to be reinforced with stell to allow the installation of the step by step equipment.  When the step had to be replaced the only digital switch host available was the Maxville No. 5ESS.  So this office is now the home of a Remote Switch Module.


IRONTON

This is the CenturyLink office in this eastern Missouri town, it is one of the few independents in the state. Ironton was the hub for transport of iron ore during the civil war from the hinterlands to St. Louis via rail.  Iron Mountain and Pilot Knob were two sources of iron ore at the time.

IMPERIAL

 

 It is hosted by the Maxville 5ESS

JACKSON

 

 Houses a No. 5 ESS Switch.

JONESBURG

 

 No switch in this building.  It started life as a repeater station in the Bell System.  It, like many small offices have proven invaluable to the Bell Operating Companies as fiber regenerator points in their SONET networks.  It started as the small square building on the right and has been expanded twice.

Old Exchanges: HUntley

KANSAS CITY 01 "BENTON"

 

  

KANSAS CITY 21 "GLADSTONE"

 

 The Kansas City offices here are primarily named after the area in which they are located.  Gladstone is a suburb north of North Kansas City.

KANSAS CITY 22 "INDEPENDENCE"

 

Independence is the home town of President Harry Truman.

 

 

KANSAS CITY 23 "PARKVILLE"

 

 This was a rural office 25 years ago but the entire left side of the building was added to accommodate the huge housing tracts opened up about 1980.  If you go south from Parkville you end up in Kansas.

KANSAS CITY 24 "RAYTOWN"

 

 This office is not in Kansas City, Missouri. Raytown is a separate city surrounded by Kansas City, MO with a small piece of border on Independence.  It’s not quite as far southeast of downtown Kansas City as lee’s Summit but it’s close.  A pleasant community still today.


KANSAS CITY 42 "LIBERTY"

All small college towns have the same feel about them, they are sedate places where you would like to raise a family.  Liberty is the Northeastern part of Kansas City metro, beyond that you are in farming country.

KENNETT

 

 This office houses an Erricson AXE10 host switch which serves several remotes in the Missouri boot heel.  Note the hoisting I beam towards the rear of the building with the second floor loading door directly underneath it.  The antennae visible in the picture are not part of the office, they belong to the police department building hidden in this picture.

Old Exchanges: TUxedo 8

KIRKSVILLE

 

 This office still has working radio in it.  There is major water main work being done on the North and East sides of the office in October 2007.  The antenna on the south side of the building faces Moberly, Mo, 66 miles south.  I included both northern and southern exposures to show that the Radio tower is built in the middle of the Central Office, not outside of it.  For some reason both photographs give the illusion that the tower is built adjacent to the building.

KNOB NOSTER

 

 Knob Noster is situated between Springfield and Kansas City and is home to the B2 Spirit bombers at Whiteman Air Force base.  Used to have a lot of missile silos in this area too making it a prime target for our cold war opposition.

LANCASTER

 

 Houses a NORTEL RSC hosted by the Kirksville DMS100.  The utility pole on the left side of the picture partially obscures the old Southwester Bell logo image left behind after it was removed.  The paint underneath the logo did not weather the same as the rest of the building.

Old Exchange: GLadstone

LEADWOOD

 

 Home to a remote hosted by the Flat River No. 5ESS.  This town is right in the middle of the largest lead mining area in the world.  Until the end of lead in paint this was a very prosperous area of the state.

LINN

 

 Houses the Erricson AXE10 switch cluster hub in middle Missouri.

LOUISIANA

 

 It houses a Nortel remote switch hosted by the Hannibal, MO DMS100. 

Old Exchanges: SKyline

MANCHESTER

 

 Home to a No. 5 ESS digital switch.  The pictures here appear to show a 2 story office.  it is actually 3 stories, the third story being on ground level in the rear with a basement below that first floor.  So you are looking at the second floor ground level from this view.  This office is also home to an assortment of SBC management in the State staff.  It is also an Emergency
Operations Center (EOC) for the telephone company,
the EOC was installed about the time the New Madrid Earthquake problem began to be known and would be used to contact their Texas operations via shortwave radio when their other communications have crashed.  There are HF antennas on the roof including the log periodic antenna that can partially
be seen in the picture on your site. (Thanks to a contributor for this info)
 

MARBLE HILL

 

 Office shows the change of direction on signage which started in 2007.  Next to the front door is the new AT&T logo which is showing up on Central Offices in all 3 of the states (Missouri, Arkansas and Kansas).  Virtually every Central Office had its old Southwestern Bell signage removed over the last 5 years.  This building houses a No. 5ESS RSM hosted by Cape Girardeau.

MARSHALL

 

 Marshall is a clean little city which is the county seat for Saline county.  This office had one of the first SONET OC192 systems in the old Southwestern Bell installed in it.  The area above the entrance portico is uniquely tiled with 1 inch pink, blue and white ceramic tiles.

Old Exchanges: GArfield

MARSTON

 

 This office is home to a Nortel remote switch hosted by the Sikeston DMS100.  This is one of the few SEMO river Central Offices which did not require extensive earthquake reinforcement.

Old Exchanges: NIagra

MAXVILLE

 

 Located in Arnold, MO.  It houses a No. 5 ESS switch.

META

 

 Home to an Erricson remote switch hosted by the Linn, MO AXE10. Still has remnants of the classic "Bell".

Old Exchange: BAldwin

MEXICO

 

 

 

This is one of a very few SBC offices which are home to an Erricson AXE10 digital switch.  It is a host for an AXRS remote in Montgomery City, MO.  It still has a working pay telephone by the front door.

MOBERLY

 

 Moberly started life as just the small building on the right hand side of this picture.  It grew a large building addition and a radio tower when it became a tandem office.

MONTGOMERY CITY

 

 Houses an Erricson remote switch hosted by the Mexico switch.  It serves this farm community in Montgomery county.  This blond brick is unusual for a rural office, cinder block or red brick is what you generally find.

Old Exchanges: LOgan

MOREHOUSE

 

 Houses a Nortel RSC hosted by the Sikeston DMS100.  It is an odd structure even for Southeast Missouri.  The original building is the old frame farmhouse in front.  About 40 years ago a cinder block addition was made on the rear of the building as well as on the left side.  The frame building did not require earthquake bracing ala New Madrid but the cinder block addition did.  So the steel earthquake frame envelops the entire structure.

NEW MADRID

 

 This picture answers the question, "What do you do if the Central Office you built in the middle of the 20th century should have been built earthquake resistant but was not?"  By the time they  found out this office was smack dab on top of an active fault it was impossible to reinforce the building itself.  So what SBC did was to build an earthquake resistant steel cage and connect the building to it in the late 1980s.  Remote switch hosted by Sikeston CO.

Old Exchange: SHerwood.

NIXA

 

 A modern Central Office no windows, no signage sitting right on a residential street in this Springfield, MO suburb.

ODESSA

 

 This is one of those sturdy old repeater huts that got expanded over the last 15 years to accommodate SONET regen equipment.  The winter of 2006-2007 has seen heavy use of the diesel generator set on the left side of this building.

OLD APPLETON

 

 Home to a No. 5ESS RSM hosted by the Cape Girardeau switch.  The new signage hasn’t been applied to this building yet.

OSAGE BEACH

 

 In this building is a No. 5 ESS Remote Switch hosted by the Eldon No.5 ESS switch.

Old Exchange: FIreside 4

PACIFIC

 

 Home to a Lucent No. 5ESS Remote Switching Module.  It is the first town west of St. Louis county line.

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