Cincinnati and Suburban Telephone Company Building, Cincinnati

Located at the corner of Seventh and Elm Streets in downtown Cincinnati, the Cincinnati and Suburban Telephone Company Building stands as a striking example of early 20th-century Art Deco architecture, infused with the spirit of industrial progress and communication. Designed by prominent local architect Harry Hake, this twelve-story structure was completed in 1931 and officially added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 20, 1995.

Commissioned by the Cincinnati Bell Company, the building once housed the world's longest straight switchboard, equipped with 88 operator positions-a reflection of Cincinnati’s importance in the evolution of telecommunications. But this was no ordinary office building. It was designed with security in mind: a single button could seal off the lower floors by locking heavy steel doors and activating metal window shields, a safeguard for the city’s vital phone network.

The building’s Art Deco facade is more than decorative; it serves as a sculptural ode to communication itself. Carved into the limestone frieze are images of rotary telephones, a runner, Alexander Graham Bell, and nautical flag signals-a stylized visual narrative of human connection through the ages.

Constructed by the J. and F. Harig Company, the structure occupies a spot within a dense urban patchwork of churches, department stores, restaurants, housing, and parking garages. Its symmetrical design includes eighteen bays on the north facade and ten on the east, topped with a distinctive two-story penthouse. A date plate marked "1930" and the words "Seventh Street" are etched near the base, grounding it in time and place.

Today, the Cincinnati and Suburban Telephone Company Building remains a proud architectural relic-an artifact of an era when communication was wired, switchboards buzzed, and Art Deco ruled the skyline.