The Annunciator Box

Really cool find – would never have known there were buttons for that, I only knew about the bell/wire system like in the Merchant House!

we have one nearly identical in nyc. several buttons still working.

the dining room one was probably connected to a small wire in the floor, into which one could connect a portable buzzer small cord covered wire that it connected to. That way, no matter what size the rug, or where the mistress sat she could have the buzzer positioned at her feet.

similar connections were sometimes located in the baseboards in bedrooms so one could connect some kind of connect which ended with a push button that could be located on the bedside table.
some of these were very beautiful, but i have never seen one that survived in its original location…(like looking for the always missing “remote” in todays homes. The buttons located near the doors in rooms weren’t ideal when calling for breakfast, for example. many many large apartments built with servants rooms in nyc in the teens and twenties had these.

The bell-board is not dead. Until a few years ago, I lived in a high-rise condominium building built in 1980 and all of the units had modern, electric servant bell-boards and maid quarters. Each of the rooms had call buttons but we had such a large place that a lot of time was wasted running back and forth between the kitchen and rooms that we installed an Aiphone closed telephone system. However, the bell-board was still used for the exterior doors, dining room and living rooms. Although it was housed in a plastic casing, it worked just like the antique ones with a buzzer and a number dropping in a window. The maids would push a button on the box to reset the number until the next call. So, the Bell-boards (annuciators) still exist but inter-coms are more efficient.

My grandmother bought a house in Poughkeepsie that was a model home built just before the crash in ’29. Sponsored in part by the local utility it was all electric and had the first instance ‘double throw light switches’ that allowed turning on the light at one end of the hall and turning it off from another switch. And of course it had a Knickebocker Annunciator with buttons in every room. At Christmas dinner my father always threatened no dessert for any of the kids who slipped a foot over to press the hostess button. I manipulated a yardstick with my foot and buzzed in from 3 chairs away which fired up my dad and horrified the adjacent cousins.

This post, while excellent, restricts the definition and use of “annunciator” to a sole particular one. In fact, any device that announces one’s presence is called an annunciator. Sometimes one steps on a mat and a chime sounds. Sometimes opening a door to a shop causes a small bell attached to the door to ring. Sometimes one’s body breaks a light beam to indicate that he/she has entered. There is also a broader definition of annunciator that includes police call boxes, baby monitors, alerts of malfunction in machinery and digital equipment, and the like.