Residents are marveling at a recently completed project sponsored by South Pasadena Beautiful, a 501(c)3 non-profit, that has turned a long-abandoned payphone on El Centro Street outside the South Pasadena Post Office into a public art piece.
The redo of the graffitied and dilapidated payphone into a Wind Phone was carried out by South Pasadena High School Senior Andrea Wilgoren, an aspiring art major, and city resident Monica Kelly over the last half of the summer.
“We’re pleased to enable residents to improve public spaces in our town through voluntary efforts that conserve resources and give new life to what’s old,” said Gina Atkinson, South Pasadena Beautiful president.
Painted blue with cloud wisps blown by the wind, the project adds an artistic element to the drought tolerant landscaping South Pasadena Beautiful completed at the Works Progress Administration-era Post Office at 1001 Fremont Avenue.
“Though this phone will never ring,” reads the inscription on the Wind Phone, “it carries your message on the wind. Say hello, goodbye, say I love you, I miss you, words you wish you had said, words you wish you could say.”
The phone is a relic of the telephonic era, when phone companies operated networks of payphones to serve travelers and pedestrians who needed to make calls while out of their homes and workplaces, whether to summon a cab or reach a friend or relative. The major telephone companies eventually sold the payphones to smaller companies when the industry was deregulated. However, those subsequent owners abandoned them when cell phones became common. The payphone at the Post Office, which hasn’t worked for decades, is one of the last of its kind in South Pasadena.
