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Have you walked by this “office” building at 1200 H Street (left picture) or 722 12th Street (right picture) and wondered what on earth Verizon does in there? Maybe you’ve peeked in and realized there is no receptionist, much less signs of life?
There are few clues as to what is inside the building but they are there…such as the sign on the front door that says “Colocation Entrance” or this sign still on the chain link fence referring to C & P vehicles.
What is C & P, you ask? Locals will know that Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone, the local phone company founded in 1883, was part of the Ma Bell system when the US telephone monopoly break up took place in 1984 and C & P morphed into Bell Atlantic along with a few other local phone companies. Add NYNEX and GTE to Bell Atlantic in the mid-90s and Verizon was born in 2000 (we’ve glossed over some of the merger details to keep it short but all you antitrust attorneys (and we know the PQ has some!) can get the diagram here).
This building is the central office (or “CO”) for much of downtown Washington DC including the Penn Quarter and it’s where all your landline phone and DSL lines end up. The only people you should see going in and out are Verizon and other phone/network companies’ service personnel. We thought you’d like to know.
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Comments
There are old Ma Bell buildings in just about every town in the country, big or small. And you can usually spot them pretty easily. Like this building, they normally don’t fit in with their surroundings due to their typically monolithic look. It makes sense, since the insides of these buildings look more like the inside of a TV than a typical office building.
I vaguely remember having to go there in the very early 80s to pay a bill. It was quite a shoddy part of town back then.
back in the mid 80’s this was the place to go and wait in a long line if you were getting phone service. it would take hours. it was also the ONLY place to go if you had any questions about bills or challenged the billing. finally, this was the location where you went to get your service turned back on if it was shut-off for non-payment. so there were lots of police and security always present. personally, i thought it was humorous because i’ve have never seen so many people yelling, fussing and cursing at people behind plexiglass.
this is near the historic greyhound bus station where examples of segregation were slowly dismantled. people seem to forget that the bus depot was downtown, near chinatown and not always behind union station. and that why the buses have always come to chinatown.
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I work directly across the street in the AAAS building, 1200 NY Ave. Verizon’s got one ugly building there.