Telephony history — from a replica of Alexander Graham Bell’s 1876 liquid phone to modern smart phones — is on display at a quaint St. Louis museum.
Housed in a restored 1896 two-family duplex in the Jefferson Barracks area — the oldest military installation west of the Mississippi — the Jefferson Barracks Telephone Museum is a gem I only recently discovered by happenstance. While trying to find information about Seattle’s Connections Museum, JBTM was the top result after I searched for “telephone museum” on Google.
I did not know such a museum existed in Missouri, as I was more familiar with the Connections Museum (thanks to its YouTube channel) and the private JKL Museum of Telephony located in northern California. I immediately clicked on the link to JBTM’s website to learn more, and scrolled through Google Map reviews and photos to get a glimpse into the museum’s collection.
I knew I had to see the collection in person. On Saturday, just a week or so after learning about the museum, I made the 100-plus-mile trip to the museum in St. Louis.
Upon arrival, I was greeted by a former Southwestern Bell employee who worked on a variety of equipment, ranging from electro-mechanical switches (like the functioning step switch he would demonstrate after accepting my $5 admission fee) to computerized switches like AT&T/Lucent Technologies’ 5ESS and Northern Telecom’s DMS-100. He even worked on one of Southwestern Bell’s first computerized switches — a Western Electric No. 1ESS — in St. Louis.
It was awesome, in a nerdy way, listening to clicks and clanks of the step-by-step switch seeking connections as I dialed a number on a Model 500 rotary telephone akin to the one I cleaned up earlier this year.
Found in the same room as the step switch is a variety of early telephones, ranging from wood magneto and battery phones to the ubiquitous candlestick phone of the 1920s-30s. An early teletype, Bell System lanterns and cable markers are also on display in the room — along with a telegraph key and poster showing Morse code.
The next room of the museum features newer phones of the 1950s-70s — primarily the numerous rotary Model 500 varieties, along with Western Electric Princess and Trimline phones. A GTE Styleline, General Telephone’s answer to Bell System/WE’s Trimline, is also on display. All phones in the room have rotary dials.
The room also features a pay phone booth.
A telephone pole with climbing gear is also found in the second room, along with commemorative painted telephone plates and Bell System/AT&T hard hats.
A small room connected to the second room showcases tools of the telephone trade, from glass insulators and soldering irons to lineman (“Butt set”) handsets. Of special interest to me was the IBM 519 control panel, which was used for programming an IBM tabulating machine — the predecessor to computers.
The third room of the museum has two switchboards, including one that was used for switching calls by the President of the United States (during the Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations) when in St. Louis. The POTUS switchboard features an AUTOVON Touch-Tone dial pad. The room also features signage (of the Bell System, independent telephone companies and international signs), police and fire call boxes, decorative telephones from the 1970s, automatic dialers, and video phones. All phones in this room have Touch-Tone dial pads (except the call boxes.) In the corner is a small display case paying homage to the Southwestern Bell headquarters, which was originally based in St. Louis.
Mirroring the second room, another small room is found in the third room. This one is dedicated to Yellow Pages and telephone directories. There is a gamut of Southwestern Bell Yellow Pages memorabilia, along with printing plates and — yes — old telephone directories from the early 20th century.
The fourth, and final, room truly shows how far telecommunications have come since Alexander Graham Bell uttered the words “Mr. Watson, come here, I want you” into the first telephone in 1876. On display in this room is a replica of AGB’s 1876 liquid phone and a replica of the first commercial telephone. However, just around the corner is a display showing the evolution of cell phones — from bag phones and radiotelephones to Motorola’s DynaTAC and modern smart phones. The same display case with the earliest phones also contains the newest landline phones, such as cordless phones from the 1990s and 2000s. A life-size statue of AGB is also found in the room.
Because the museum is adjacent to a military installation, they didn’t forget military telephones. Various military phones from World War I through the Gulf War are also displayed in the fourth room.
Last, but not least, is the museum’s large collection of novelty telephones. After the divestiture of the Bell System in 1984 (which had strict rules for what equipment could be used on their network), companies began producing phones modeled after cartoon characters, popular culture icons, objects and more. From Alvin the Chipmunk to a tyrannosaurus dinosaur, the museum has it.
Likely due to limited space, the museum primarily focuses on telephones themselves. The evolution of switching, such as computerized switches, isn’t really mentioned. (However, the docent there during my visit pulled out a binder with photos of a variety of switches, from electro-mechanical to the 5ESS and DMS-100.) For a master class on switching, the Connections Museum in Seattle is your best bet — as they go beyond the step switch and have a functioning 3ESS and DMS-10, along with other electro-mechanical switches. (However, the Connections Museum is housed in a far larger building — co-located in an operating CenturyLink/Lumen central office. And, as of writing this, the Connections Museum has outgrown that location to the point where they’re opening a second Seattle museum and are expanding to a third museum in Denver that will house a 5ESS along with items from the JKL Museum of Telephony.)
Outside of the cross-section of cable in the first room, transmission technologies are also not mentioned. A blaring omission to me was the lack of mention of AT&T Long Lines, the Bell System division tasked with handling long-distance telephone calls from coast to coast using cable and microwave networks. (I was hoping to see at least one photo of a Long Lines microwave relay tower, such as one from the nearby Hillsboro installation that was a major hub in the Long Lines network.)
However, the museum does a great job of showing telephony history, from AGB’s first phones to the modern smart phone I was using to take the photos with. After the step switch call, I was left alone to wonder around the museum at my own pace. Most artifacts are accompanied with cards to tell you about the item and its significance. If questions arise, you can ask a docent — most of whom are former Bell System employees.
Like what you see in this post? I’d highly recommend stopping in at the Jefferson Barracks Telephone Museum if you’re in St. Louis. Admission is $5 for adults, $4 for seniors above 60, $3 for children 5-12, and free for children younger than 4 and military personnel with active military identification. To contact the museum, visit its website at www.jbtelmuseum.org or give them a ring at 314-416-8004. The museum is open 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday, although closed for major holidays. The museum also has a gift shop filled with Bell System and other telephone memorabilia for sale.
Visited October 11, 2025. Overall rating: 4.5/5