Originally known as “Phone Town,” this community along the National Road became a major telecommunications center in America after the American Telephone and Telegraph Company selected it in 1893 as the site of a repeater station to boost transmission on the company’s long-distance lines between Pittsburgh and St. Louis. The first operations were housed in the local Grange Hall, but it soon proved too small, and AT&T built a three-story structure for telegraph service and operator-assisted station-to-station calls. The top floor housed telegraph operations, handling personal and business messages as well as communications for the Associated Press, United Press, and International News Service. The second floor contained the long-distance center, where operators were responsible for 120 circuits connecting the east and west coasts and other parts of the nation. Special emergency circuits for the press and government agencies were also located there, and on-site generators provided electric power so operations could continue in any weather. Telephone switching operations ceased in 1936 with the installation of an automated system at the AT&T office in Dayton, and part of the original three-story building remains.