Here's Your New Telephone Service!

Alexander Graham Bell at the 1892 opening of long-distance service from New York to Chicago. Source: Library of Congress

Located on the original Chicago-Geneva toll line the Chicago Telephone Company’s first experimental line of its kind was situated in Lombard. The line was installed during 1881 and into the first half of 1882, and went into service the same year.

The first issue of the Chicago Telephone Directory following the complete consolidation of the plant listed Lombard, Illinois and had a .25 cent toll. Note we have no record of the date nor the specific address where the FRIST Lombard telephone was located. The listing however, remained unchanged through 1885.

Allen Hills General Store, photograph, nd.

By the following year, the toll station is listed in the Allen E. Hills, General Store, and Post Office. In 1898, the toll station would move once again to the Mech Hardware Store where it would reside for a number of years.

Telephone service continued to grow and by the late 1920s, Lombard would receive a new common battery switchboard operated by Illinois Bell Telephone Company Service. The new telephone office was located on the second floor of what was called the Hahn Building it was in the heart of the business section at Park Ave. and St. Charles Rd. The new switchboard of nine operators was the third-largest design of its kind in the suburban area of Chicago.