What is it?

While perusing Craigslist the other day, I strayed from cars to furniture and found this intriguing piece that I actually really want:



But I didn't know what it was...

Here's another:



And another with a slightly more modern take:



Yes, it's a telephone table. I love the concept of a little bench where you sit, with a surface for the phone and shelves for your phone books, etc. One of the houses that I looked at actually had its phone room. It was a great house, but for that room alone, it was especially attractive.

Phone tables and phone rooms are nostalgic in a way. They're from an era when communicating via wire was not taken lightly. Phone tables were only necessary when phones were fixed objects, unlike today when they fit into our pockets, and freely travel about the world with us, untethered to the wall. These tables fit right into my notion of the simpler, romantic past that was likely neither simple, nor romantic.

This example is defintely not romantic - not my style.



I love this one:





I'm still hoping to get the top item, but the Craigslist people may sell it before I have a chance to pick it up (drat this having no car!).

Maybe that's what that phantom space on the 3rd floor is - a phone room!