AT&T Switching Center

811 10th Avenue | Hell's Kitchen

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The lot about 1940
About 1940. Via 1940s.nyc
The lot about 1985
About 1985. Via 80s.nyc

The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.

Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.

  1. 1964

    AT&T completes a windowless switching center on Tenth Avenue

    Kahn & Jacobs designs the 370-foot-tall tower for AT&T to house telephone switching equipment. It fills the western side of Tenth Avenue between West 53rd and 54th Streets, has no windows, and is built to survive a nuclear blast. The New York Times reports in 1975 that it was the first of several windowless AT&T buildings in Manhattan and drew considerable controversy.

    Source: Wikipedia

  2. 1985

    The NSA reportedly uses the building for domestic surveillance

    After 1985, the National Security Agency is reported to use the switching center for its Fairview program, which spied on U.S. citizens. The claim comes from a 2018 investigation by The Intercept.

    Source: Wikipedia

  3. 2000

    AT&T converts the switching center into an internet data center

    AT&T upgrades the building from a hardened telephone data center to what an AT&T fact sheet calls an Internet Data Center. As of 2014, backup power comes from four 2,000-kilowatt generators and three fuel tanks holding 20,000 gallons each.

    Source: Wikipedia

  4. 2018

    June 25

    The Intercept publishes NSA and AT&T maps marking the Tenth Avenue tower as an internet surveillance hub

    On June 25, 2018, The Intercept reported that NSA and AT&T maps showed 811 Tenth Avenue as one of eight peering hubs in the NSA surveillance program code-named Fairview. According to two former AT&T employees, it was among the company's eight primary routing sites. The report said that, unlike 33 Thomas Street, a hub for international phone calls, this site appeared mainly to collect emails, online chats and browsing data.

    Source: theintercept.com

Further reading

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