To unlock your front door in New York City, you can make a QR code for a guest, open the door with a smartwatch or video chat with the UPS guy, even when you’re not home.

Yet across prewar co-ops and walk-ups that haven’t seen a renovation since Ed Koch was mayor, the stainless steel panel listing each unit next to a tiny, round button remains ubiquitous.

The quintessential doorbell of New York City can look like it was unearthed in an archaeological dig, battered with almost-worn stickers, caked-on dirt and fingerprints galore.

The Analog Charms of New York’s Intercoms

New York apartment buzzers are loud, often broken and haven’t been upgraded since the ’70s. But would we have it any other way?

By Gina Ryder Photographs by George Etheredge

April 30, 2026

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When a visitor presses a button on an analog New York City apartment intercom, they enter a time portal to somewhere in the last century when the wiring was likely installed.

If they’re lucky, someone upstairs will hear it: a metallic, almost offensive clang that sets the dog barking and sends cortisol spiking. Then comes the electric sigh of the lock releasing, and they’re let inside.

Its abrasive, loud buzz is the sound of takeout arriving, dates buzzing up for the first sleepover and delivery drivers pressing a button and walking away without waiting for an answer.

Press me

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“It can wake the dead, that sound,”

— Malcolm Arnold, 63, owner of Apple Core Electronics

Malcolm Arnold’s 2,000-square-foot business, Apple Core Electronics, on Flushing Avenue in Bushwick makes exterior intercom panels, sets their wiring, punches buttons and engraves addresses.

Using precise measurements and instructions from intercom specialists and building owners, Apple Core’s workers monitor industrial machines that cut steel and punch holes for everything from small multifamily buildings to 200-unit high-rises.

Residents don’t see the tangled innards of their intercom systems. George Etheredge for The New York Times

Stalyn Henriquez troubleshot an issue with a New York building’s intercom speaker. George Etheredge for The New York Times

One of Apple Core’s regular clients is Intercom Techs, a small business focused on repairing and replacing analog systems, owned by husband-and-wife team Suleyka Henriquez, 35, and Stalyn Henriquez, 46.

“NYC is full of old stuff, and I’m the one who is fixing it,” said Mr. Henriquez. The couple has 80 clients and makes eight to 12 emergency service calls daily around the city.

One morning in April, Mr. Henriquez and a technician, Luis Concepcion, 58, started their day with the sound of a screwdriver at the end of a drill to pry open the panel inside a Hell’s Kitchen walk-up. The men opened the panel to find a quagmire of colorful wires in a cutout in the wall.

Fixing intercoms isn’t the most glamorous of jobs. George Etheredge for The New York Times

Michael Weiss’s intercom was broken on his walk-up apartment. George Etheredge for The New York Times

Michael Weiss, a resident of the building, noticed his intercom was broken when his takeout never arrived one night last winter. He filed a repair ticket with the building and one month later, Edward Jiménez, a technician with Intercom Techs, swapped out the in-unit station. After repairing the bell, Mr. Jiménez found no outside sound reached the apartment’s phone speaker, so the company scheduled a return visit to Mr. Weiss’s apartment in April to investigate.

If 4B has communication and 5B doesn’t, maybe it’s 5B’s unit. If both floors are off, maybe the system itself is the issue. Like ‘West Side Story’ characters who talk to one another on fire escapes, the intercom repairmen communicate from different floors as they diagnose why New Yorkers’ buzzers are broken and clarify what was once garbled. In today’s case, the two found the speaker and microphone busted. They ordered a new one from El Vox, an Italian manufacturer, and will return to install it once the part arrives.

George Etheredge for The New York Times

George Etheredge for The New York Times

George Etheredge for The New York Times

George Etheredge for The New York Times

George Etheredge for The New York Times

George Etheredge for The New York Times

George Etheredge for The New York Times

George Etheredge for The New York Times

A rich tapestry of rusted, scratched, worn-out and modified intercom panels can be found across New York City.

Analog charm persists around the city.

On the Upper East Side, Ethan De La Rosa-Kerr figured out the “door” button on his intercom wasn’t working when he was moving in this past January. On his visit, it took Mr. Jiménez about half an hour to fix the door release and replace Mr. De La Rosa-Kerr’s in-unit intercom. ​​The building also requested a new lobby panel to accommodate tenants with new addresses after combining units, and to replace their old brass panel with its missing buttons, handwritten notes and worn-off engravings.

Intercom Techs technicians Edward Jiménez and Luis Concepcion replaced an intercom plate on the Upper East Side. George Etheredge for The New York Times

Intercom maintenance work requires extreme patience. George Etheredge for The New York Times

One family on the Lower East Side has been using the same intercom for almost the last half-century, and they’re ready for a change.

Annette Caraballo, 57, a stay-at-home mom of three, moved into Village East, a three-building, 434-unit Mitchell-Lama co-op complex, in 1977 when she was 8 years old. Back then, the lobby intercom at the East Village complex had a phone receiver; visitors dialed a code to buzz a resident’s landline — if the line was busy, they got a busy signal.

The intercom at Village East is over 40 years old. George Etheredge for The New York Times

Stickers replace some of the numbers that have worn away over the years. George Etheredge for The New York Times

In 1980, the classic stainless-steel panel in the lobby connected to an in-unit buzzer was installed and remains there today. Until the early 2000s, the building had closed-circuit television, piping a live lobby feed onto a private cable channel. Residents could flip on the TV to see who was downstairs before buzzing them in.

Growing up, Ms. Caraballo’s mother would watch the lobby feed on TV as she waited for her father to come home from his work as a corrections officer at Rikers Island. In the late 80s, in her clubbing days when she’d stay out until 4 a.m. dancing at The Underground in Union Square, Ms. Caraballo’s father would stay up to watch the feed until she got safely in the front door.

Ms. Caraballo misses being able to see who’s at the door on video. She said her current intercom “works whenever it wants to” and makes a clicking sound instead of a buzzing sound.

Press me

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“Sometimes I can hear who’s talking downstairs, and sometimes I can’t. Sometimes they can’t hear me if I’m speaking.”

— Annette Caraballo, 57, resident of a Mitchell-Lama co-op

According to Village East co-op board vice president, Rachel, 57, a bookkeeper who asked to be identified by first name only, many building residents want a video intercom to prevent package theft and increase security. The older systems like Village’s East’s can be challenging to repair and maintain — the manufacturer of its intercom, Hemco Inc., is no longer in business and the technician who used to repair it by hand has retired. But newer systems, often with a monthly fee, are still more expensive.

The manufacturer of the intercom in Rachel and her dog Alfie’s apartment is no longer in business. George Etheredge for The New York Times

Village East’s co-op board was quoted $500,000 for a video system upgrade and will form an intercom committee that will decide what’s doable.

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“The majority of the people in this building want a video intercom so we can see who’s there.”

— Rachel, 57, vice president of Village East co-op board

Mr. Concepcion, a technician from Intercom Techs, lives in a building in the Bronx, where he can buzz people in through his phone. He believes that eventually, most buildings will update to a virtual system. Until then, he is the bridge between analog and digital.

Once the new lobby panel for Mr. De La Rosa-Kerr’s Upper East Side building arrived, Mr. Concepcion was back there, using his drill to open the panel and expose hundreds of vein-like wires. He held the old and new panels side-by-side to check that each old button matched up with the new one. For the next eight hours, he stood in that lobby, unbraiding and re-braiding wires with surgical precision until the new panel was installed. Later that night, tenants arrived home none the wiser of the time and skill it took to untangle the cables their voices would soon travel through.

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