Welcome to the Phone Booth Capital of America : Telecommunications: The Benner-Nawman factory is the largest employer in tiny Wickenburg, Ariz.
Telephone booths in various forms abound on the American landscape.
They are found on sidewalks in business districts, at airports, bus and railroad stations, at gas stations, convenience stores, supermarkets, shopping malls, schools, factories and military bases.
And a large number--in the United States and in 37 other countries--come from this tiny desert town in the shadows of the Vulture Mountains.
On the edge of Wickenburg, where cactus country begins, is Benner-Nawman Inc.’s telephone booth factory. The company is the nation’s largest builder of phone booths, and its 21-year-old Wickenburg factory, with 55 employees, is the town’s biggest employer.
Pay-phone booths, invented by William Gray of Hartford, Conn., came along in 1889, 13 years after Alexander Graham Bell received his patent for the telephone. Gray’s first booth was erected in a Hartford bank.
Early booths were larger than modern ones: four or five feet square, domed and with a ventilated roof. Attendants stood outside collecting money for phone calls.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Western Electric dominated the telephone booth business, cranking out thousands of wood, chicken wire and glass booths. The firm sold the booths to phone companies for about $150, but some of the survivors now bring as much as $3,000 in antique shops.
In 1948, Pacific Telephone approached Rollie Nawman, owner of the Benner-Nawman sheet metal shop in Oakland, and asked him to build a better phone booth--one that would last longer, be easier to install and take less maintenance.
Nawman invented an aluminum and glass booth that revolutionized the industry and has been Benner-Nawman’s bread and butter since. The 65-year-old company has enjoyed steady growth throughout its history, and last year’s sales were nearly $14 million. Corporate headquarters are in Benicia, in Northern California.
Benner-Nawman’s full phone booths sell for $750 to $1,500 each; pedestal-mounted enclosures go for $450 to $1,250, and wall mounts cost $100 to $950. The company’s most sophisticated model is the sit-down type of booth found in airports.
Ed Kientz, 40, Rollie Nawman’s grandson, is president of the company, and his brother, Mel, 42, is senior vice president.
Their phone booths and enclosures--made here and at the company’s plant in Vandalia, Ill.--are shipped to all 50 states and all over the world.
“We’re currently making 1,500 units for the Dominican Republic,” Mel Kientz said. “We have a sales force that travels the world. We tell Third World nations that, in order to get up to speed, they have to have modern communications systems. The best way to start is to have public telephones.”
The company means a lot to Wickenburg, population 4,000. Jim Glazier, 48, who works on final assembly of telephone wall mounts, said, “Working for the telephone booth company here is the best job in town. The payroll helps keep Wickenburg going. We encourage everyone to make phone calls at every opportunity in phone booths and phone enclosures.”
