Verizon Communications (), branded as Verizon (pronounced ), is an American broadband and telecommunications company and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is based at 140 West Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, but is incorporated in Delaware. What eventually became Verizon was founded as Bell Atlantic, which was one of the seven Baby Bells that were formed after AT&T Corporation was forced to relinquish its control of the Bell System by order of the Justice Department of the United States. Bell Atlantic came into existence in 1984 with a footprint from New Jersey to Virginia, with each area having a separate operating company (consisting of New Jersey Bell, Bell of Pennsylvania, Diamond State Telephone, and C&P Telephone). As part of the rebranding that the Baby Bells took in the mid-1990s, all of the operating companies assumed the Bell Atlantic name. In 1997, Bell Atlantic expanded into New York and the New England states by merging with fellow Baby Bell NYNEX. In addition, Bell Atlantic moved their headquarters from Philadelphia into the old NYNEX headquarters and rebranded the entire company as Bell Atlantic. In 2000 Bell Atlantic merged with GTE, which operated telecommunications companies across most of the rest of the country that was not already in Bell Atlantic’s footprint. The combined company elected to change its name to “Verizon”, a portmanteau of (Latin for “truth”) and horizon. The first New York City company headquarters was at 1095 Avenue of the Americas (1997-2000) until the Bell Atlantic-GTE merger, when the headquarters moved to the Verizon Building at 140 West Street in Lower Manhattan, before returning to the 1095 space in 2013.
