Parents bombarding the Sidwell Friends switchboards dates back to the beginning of the last century. But pay phones on campus quickly surged before becoming obsolete at the beginning of this century. Now, phones—and phone numbers—are as pervasive as people, and the District’s 202 has a new cachet.

This fall, DC residents have been scrambling to get one of the few remaining phone numbers with the iconic 202 area code before companies begin transitioning to the new 771 area code in November. Let’s take a look back at how many other telephone transitions Sidwell Friends has endured over the years.

For the first two decades of the School’s existence, there was no telephone. If you were interested in enrolling your child, you stopped by the Eye Street Meetinghouse in early September between 9:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. (The application process was rather straightforward in those days. “The peculiarities, weaknesses, or evil tendencies of children should be frankly set forth by parents at the time application for admission is made,” the School’s brochure stated, “so that the principals may decide more wisely whether it is to the interest of both parties to receive the applicant, and if so, how his needs may best be met.”)

It appears the School acquired its first phone in 1905, when telephone charges began appearing in the ledger books. Budgeting for phone usage was a challenge, as there were 172 messages used in October, increasing to 219 the following February—quite a bit more than they had earmarked for this new expense. Nevertheless, beginning that year, prospective families could call Main 3779 to reach the School. Phone numbers in those days were based on telephone- exchange hubs, and using words for each exchange was easier for the switchboard operators to understand. The School phone number changed to Main 284 a few years later, followed by National 0284. Thomas and Frances Sidwell also welcomed families to call their home in Foggy Bottom (West 20) and later at 3901 Wisconsin Avenue (Cleveland 953).

The Sidwells’ enthusiasm for the telephone led them to extend an invitation to Alexander Graham Bell to speak at commencement in 1914. He accepted, and the nine graduates were treated to a lengthy exposition on the power of observation to spark discovery and invention. “When I was invited to talk to you tonight, I had no idea of what to say,” he admitted. “I thought of all the good maxims for your future conduct in life; but giving advice to young people is out of my line, and it seemed to be better to choose some subject with which I was a little familiar myself.”

It didn’t take long, however, for the telephone’s shine to wear off. By 1920, parents were asked to stop bombarding the School phone with requests to pass on rainy-day dismissal plans to their children and other day-to-day logistics. Installing a pay phone in the building for students to use for outgoing calls was not enough. In a letter to parents, Thomas Sidwell noted, “Last year the Telephone Company registered an official complaint because the school line was so much in demand.”

Following Thomas Sidwell’s death in 1936, the School consolidated on the Wisconsin Avenue campus, and his immediate successor gamely continued the tradition of publishing his home phone number (Alexandria 450). The School’s third headmaster, Edwin Zavitz, however, removed it (and no head of school since then has been foolish enough to restore the practice!).

Telephone standards across the country began changing in the 1950s, and the demand for telephone usage had by that point led to three Sidwell Friends School phone lines: Woodley 6-0952, 6-0954, and 6-0955. The slow adoption of the North American Numbering Plan, which called for numerical area codes instead of the word- based system, is evident in the School’s directories from the time. The first entry in the School’s first student phone directory, published in 1957, listed Lawrence Samuel Aaronson’s home phone as RA 6-1535. Over the next decade, the student directory had a hodgepodge of styles, with EM 2-7218 followed immediately by 363-2877. By 1967, all student numbers and the School’s phone number (966-0953) were purely numerical.

Many of the current Sidwell Friends phone numbers came into existence in 1979, such as dialing 537-8130 to reach the nurse, or 537-8190 to reach the Athletics Department. It wasn’t until 1990, however, that the now-familiar 10-digit numbers suddenly appeared in the School directory. Up until that year, you could dial anyone within the DC metro area with a seven-digit number, whether they lived in Arlington or Rockville. That all changed in 1990, when all calls outside the District proper required area codes.

As in Thomas Sidwell’s day, students continued to rely on public phones for many decades, and new ones kept getting added, including by the Upper School parking entrance in 1986 (thanks to lobbying on the part of the Student Senate), with the last new public phone placed in Kenworthy Gym in 1994. It seems as if they quietly disappeared circa 2002.

Today, of course, many students have their own mobile phones, and they have never carried quarters around so they could call a parent to be picked up after sports practice or kicked a sibling off the phone to keep the line open for an important call. Indeed, the other day when the Zartman House receptionist told a student he was welcome to use her phone to make a call, he just stared at its many buttons and coiled cord, with no idea how to even begin.