About Us

The JKL Museum is a collection dedicated to the preservation of all aspects of telephony.    

We hope you will browse at your convenience and come back often.

Welcome to our site

JKL Museum of Telephony

The JKL name is the creation of the museum’s main benefactor, John K. La Rue, whose initials just happen to appear above the number 5 on most telephone dials.    

The rebuilt collection includes telephones and related equipment from all over the world, dating from the late 1870s to the 1980s. Among our many goals is to have working telephones and demonstrations from all eras, and to interconnect working telephones by way of the collections extensive central office type switching system. The collection includes a library of telephony publications, including catalogs, brochures, and telephone company publications. The collection continues to grow through the acquisition of private collections, donations of library materials, and purchases from private and public sources.

We hope you enjoy visiting our museum website with many photographs we have assembled of the old and new collections in a variety of categories. If you have questions or would like to schedule a tour, please send us an email.