“There aren’t a lot of people out,” he said. “You can just go down, find a good booth, carry it out, latch it in. It takes seconds. And then just fill it up with books and let’s wait and see what happens.”

Last winter, Mr. Locke designed a lightweight set of bookshelves to fit inside the common Titan brand of New York City pay phone kiosks. A fabricator in Brooklyn cuts the shelves, which Mr. Locke paints and assembles in his apartment.
So far he has carried out four installations, most recently at Amsterdam Avenue and West 87th Street just before 8 a.m. on a Sunday last month.
As several sleepy-eyed patrons of a 24-hour deli looked on in confusion, Mr. Locke snapped a lime green bookcase into place, stocking it with children’s books and paperback novels.
Hooks on the unit allow Mr. Locke to install it without hardware, and the entire process took less than five minutes.
He had barely rounded the corner before a man who had been standing outside the deli began browsing through titles, choosing “The Shining” by Stephen King, tucking it under his arm and heading home.