New York Telephone Co. - Specimen Bond

8 5/8% Specimen Bond printed by Security-Columbian United States Banknote Corporation.

Verizon New York, Inc., previously known as The New York Telephone Company (NYTel), was established in 1896, taking over the New York City operations of the American Bell Telephone Company. The Telephone Company of New York was created under a franchise in 1876. The founders were Charles A. Cheever and Hilborne Roosevelt. Its objective was to lease telephone devices to users, who were anticipated to supply the wires necessary for connections, such as from a factory to an office. These connections were already in place for private telegraphs, and the new technology promised to eliminate the expense of hiring a private telegraph operator. Manufacturers of steel wire for the Brooklyn Bridge, which was under construction at the time, were particularly notable among the customers utilizing this arrangement, employing their own product. Western Union subsidiaries, including Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph, Gold and Stock Telegraph, and American Speaking Telephone, based their operations in New York and San Francisco on the telephone exchange model, making them larger and more sophisticated than the local Bell operations.

Following the November 1879 resolution of the Elisha Gray patent infringement lawsuit, Western Union transferred its telephone operations to National Bell Telephone, which subsequently rebranded itself as American Bell Telephone. The merged local entity was named the Metropolitan Telephone and Telegraph Company. In 1896, the operations of the Metropolitan Telephone and Telegraph Company and the Westchester Telephone Company (which catered to northern suburban regions, including parts of what was then Westchester County that later became part of New York City as the Bronx) were unified under the title of the New York Telephone Company. The New York and New Jersey Telephone Company, a Bell licensee that served Long Island and Staten Island, was dismantled, and its New York assets were integrated with the New York company as the City and Suburban Telephone Company in 1897. Eventually, American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) acquired a controlling stake and reinstated the New York Telephone name.

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