In 1942, the second floor was completed the entire length of the building. The company, in 1952, purchased a half block on the corner of West Union and North Liberty streets and erected a new telephone building at that location. The new building housed new dial equipment as well as provide quarters for the business office was then located at 211 W. Union. The conversion to dial took place in 1955.
Marion has had fairly uninterrupted telephone service since the inception of telephones in the city. The exception was in 1951, when the Morrison Home Oil Co. building burned, damaging the main telephone cables to the office. Partial service was restored within 24 hours after the fire for emergency purposes, and complete operations were resumed within three days. Other outages include major storms which have occurred such as the 1982 tornado and 2008 windstorm that damaged much of the town.
In 1933, the telephone company had 1,041 residence and 32 pay station telephones in Marion. Ten years later the total telephones in Marion were 1,894. The city reached the 2,000 mark in 1945, with 2,162 resident and 28 service telephones. They reached the 3,000 mark in 1948, with 3,050 resident and 29 service telephones and in 1953; they reached the 4,000 mark with 4,010 resident and 32 service telephones.
On Sept. 1, 1941, there were only 1,574 telephones in Marion. In 1953 there were 4,010 company owned telephones. At that time there were only 12 operators, in 1953 there were 75. In the manager’s office, Mrs. Carrie Buckner was cashier; in 1953 three were employed in the office. The company had two maintenance men in 1941, and in 1953 there were 12. The company had six positions on the board, four local and one each, county and toll. In 1953, the company had 32 positions on their board, with 10 local and 22 toll positions.
In 1953, records show that an average of 24,000 calls daily were made on the 4,010 telephones in the city. When a 1953 windstorm hit Marion a total of 30,952 calls were recorded. The Orient Mine explosion at West Frankfort in December, 1951, caused a total of 35,000 calls in one day. The record number of calls made through the Marion exchange was when over 40,000 calls were made on April 13, 1945, the day following the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. I am sure these records were surpassed greatly by 9/11 and storm events occurring here since then.
The average telephone call, in 1953, according to Chief Operator Davis lasted five minutes and some long distance calls have lasted as much as 90 minutes. Each telephone operator averaged 230 calls per hour at her position on the board that year.
The General Telephone Co. of Illinois, a part of the General Telephone System, was one of the major companies in Marion and Williamson County by virtue of its investment in plant facilities and the number of its employees.
The General Telephone System was at one time the largest group of independent telephone companies operating in the nation and the General Telephone Co. of Illinois was the fifth largest independent telephone company in the United States in 1953.
In 1953, General Telephone Company of Illinois served over 165,000 company owned telephones in 222 exchanges in Illinois. In the company’s southern district with headquarters at Murphysboro, 47 exchanges are located, serving over 50,000 company owned telephones.
1954 was the year that GTE, cleared the entire block from Union to Jefferson Streets and N. Van Buren to N. Liberty in which to erect a large brick switching office that we still see today. Two remaining homes on the block were sold off to clear space for the new building.
Marion was the headquarters of the Marion exchange group comprised of Marion, Carterville, Creal Springs, Goreville, Herrin, Hurst, Johnston City, Ordill and Royalton and at one point in the 1960’s and 1970’s housed the Southern Division office located on Hendrickson Street.
In the 1960’s, General Telephone built an additional multi story switching office on the Van Buren Street side of the building. A microwave tower was erected in this decade as well for long distance telephone service. In this decade, General Telephone became GTE (General Telephone and Electronics) and also owned Automatic Electric, Western Electric and Sylvania Lighting.
On June 30, 2000, a merger with Bell Atlantic created Verizon and local service remained under the Verizon name for about 10 years.
Around 2010 the local service was sold to Frontier which is who it remains with to this date in February 2013. Their office is located at 208 W. Union Street.
(Data extracted from a Marion Daily Republican article by Paul Frick dated 10/15/1953; Wickipedia; city directories; compiled by Sam Lattuca on 02/13/2013)