Inglewood Telephone Building
Telephone services were introduced to Calgary in 1885 when Colonel James Walker installed a telephone line connecting his office with his lumberyard a few miles away. In 1887, recognizing the necessity and potential of this communications technology, the City of Calgary invited the Bell Telephone Company to develop a city-wide telephone system. Bell constructed a central, manually-operated telephone exchange and, by 1900, had expanded service across the city. Due to Calgary's burgeoning population and the rapidly growing demand for telephone service, the existing central exchange had reached the limits of its capacity. In 1909, the government built an automated sub-station in the Inglewood neighbourhood to address this service deficiency. Originally equipped to manage 300 new telephone lines, the new station quickly reached its capacity. The exchange was physically enlarged with an addition at the rear of the original structure, creating space for more equipment and expanding the sub-station's capacity to 1,000 lines. The Inglewood Telephone Exchange Building remained in active use as a telephone exchange until 1957, when it was replaced by more modern facilities. -Parks Canada
