Since March 11, the Riga Jugendstil Museum has been hosting an educational exhibition "Telephones of the Art Nouveau Era," which introduces the history of the Riga telephone network and the activities of the Riga Telephone Society in the early 20th century. The exhibition features telephones from the Art Nouveau era, as well as several industry catalogs from the collection of Valdis Hofmarks.
The exhibition "Telephones of the Art Nouveau Era" at the Riga Center of Modernism showcases phones from the late 19th and early 20th centuries from the collection of Valdis Hofmarks. It has been in the making for over 40 years and tells the story of the use of telephones in Latvia from their introduction until 1940. Most of the phones on display were manufactured at the factories of the Swedish company LM Ericsson in Stockholm and St. Petersburg and were used in Latvia, primarily in Riga. The exhibition features for the first time a telephone apparatus from the American company "Bell," which initiated telephone communication in Riga in 1882.
The inventor of the telephone is considered to be Alexander Graham Bell, who received a patent for the telephone in the United States in 1876. The telephone was first demonstrated in Riga on May 29 and 30, 1881, when a representative of the "Bell" company, Tenner, organized a connection between the gas plant on Basteja Boulevard and the water pumping station - now located at 194 Latgales Street.
The first telephone station in Riga was opened a year later - on May 19, 1882. The number of its subscribers was small, as the cost of using the telephone was very high. The situation changed after 1901, when the contract with the "Bell" company expired, and the right to provide telephone service in Riga passed to the "Riga Telephone Society." As the subscription fees decreased, the number of telephone users grew rapidly - from 1,070 subscribers in 1901 to 9,819 subscribers in 1913.
The exhibition is open until May 31, 2026. The museum operates daily from 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM, except on Mondays.
