The Glendale Police Museum announced the procurement of a restored Glendale Police Dept. call box made possible by generous donations from Kathleen O’Dea, the Glendale Police Officers Association, and Vital Medical Services. 

Manufactured in the mid-to-late 1920s by the Glendale Foundry and Manufacturing Company, it is the first and only style call box used by the department, and would remain in use in some capacity through the late 1960s. 

In the early days these call boxes were the means in which officers would receive their calls for service. A light atop a local hill in their district, or atop the box itself, would provide notification to the district officer that a call was pending in their area. The officer would then use their “skeleton key” to open the box and use the phone inside to call a police switchboard operator. This operator would give the officer the needed information or transfer the call to another appropriate location. These call boxes not only allowed officers to communicate with the station before radios were developed, but in later years also allowed conversations of longer duration while not tying up radio traffic. In the late 1950s and 1960s, it was reported that officers would also call into the station to speak with a stenographer who would type their reports for them.