| Artist | Evelyn Beatrice Longman |
|---|---|
| Year | 1914 |
| Type | Bronze |
| Location | Dallas |
Spirit of Communications is the formal name for a statue originally called Genius of Electricity that has been the symbol of AT&T (and also the former Western Electric) since 1914, and that is often called by the nickname Golden Boy. In 2009, the statue was relocated to AT&T's current corporate headquarters in downtown Dallas, Texas, USA.
Contents |
The official name of the image commissioned by Western Electric to be fashioned into a statue was originally The Genius of Electricity. Commissioned in 1914, it was sculpted by Evelyn Beatrice Longman. The work was completed in 1916 and hoisted to the roof of AT&T Corporate Headquarters at 195 Broadway in the Lower Manhattan area of New York City. It weighs over 16 tons and is 24 feet (7.3 m) in height with wings that extend nine feet from the body. It is cast in bronze and covered with over 40,000 pieces of gold leaf.[1]
The Genius of Electricity appeared on the cover of the Bell System telephone directories for about a decade beginning in the early 1930s and became a very well known symbol for the Bell System and its affiliated companies.
Sometime in the mid 1930s, AT&T changed the name of the statue (and the image) to The Spirit of Telecommunications. It continued to stand atop the 195 Broadway building until 1984. That year marked the opening of a new postmodern designed headquarters building for AT&T located at the AT&T Building at 550 Madison Avenue in midtown Manhattan. The roof of the new building was a sloping inverted V with a notch in the center. There was no place for a statue on the roof but AT&T management had created a massive seven story lobby that contained a specific alcove to host its well known statue and Golden Boy took up residence.
By coincidence, 1984 also marked the end of the Bell System. During the nineties, the telecommunications industry experienced significant changes as did many industries. Downsizing and mergers were the norm and AT&T was no exception. The NYC headquarters building was sold in 1992 to Sony and the company relocated their HQ functions across the Hudson River and about forty miles west to a 140-acre (0.57 km2) wooded campus purchased nine years previously in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. Golden Boy made the trip and was installed with great fanfare in front of the main entrance to the beautiful building in 1992.[2] There it stood for a decade until 2002, when AT&T sold its Basking Ridge property (now owned by Verizon) and moved eight miles (13 km) down the road to Bedminster Township. Those facilities had been the headquarters of the AT&T Long Lines division and home to the company's national network operations center. Once again, Golden Boy was trucked to a new location to stay close to upper management of the corporation.
In November 2005, SBC (once a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T—a Baby Bell) acquired AT&T. In a move designed to capitalize on the national name of its former parent, San Antonio, Texas-based SBC renamed itself AT&T. In 2009, the new AT&T moved Golden Boy to the company's new global headquarters in Dallas, Texas.[3] In January 2009, it had been removed from the Bedminster Township, New Jersey location. The statue has now been installed in the lobby of the Whitacre Tower, 208 S. Akard Street in Dallas, Texas.[3][4]