File:Warren Historic District - 20220726 - 06 - Bell Telephone Building.jpg

English: The Bell Telephone Building, 101 Pennsylvania Avenue West at East Street, Warren, Pennsylvania, July 2022. Representing the "Stripped Classical" style that was popular for use in office, commercial and institutional buildings in the era of its construction, here we see numerous examples of the simplified, sparsely applied Neoclassical decorative elements intrinsic to the style: bands of ornamental masonry fashioned into modest cornices and dental rows crown the first and third floors; cut-stone swag ornamentation on the spandrel panels between the second- and third-floor windows and contrast with an otherwise wholly brick façade; the main entrance is crowned by a simple stone architrave buttressed by ancone brackets. Warren was among the first Western Pennsylvania communities to express interest in telephony: it was in 1880 when the New York and Pennsylvania Telephone Company, as it was known at the time, inaugurated the first telephone exchange in town. Its corporate successor, the Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania, constructed the building seen here in 1924 to house its switchboard, long-distance toll board, and other plant operations; the single-story addition at right dates to about the 1940s. It is still in use for its original purpose by the company's current iteration, Verizon.