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According to the Exchange Name site, SW5 is SWiburne 5, from the Washington Heights section of Manhattan. Many of the exchanges in NYC were regional and unique and not from the list of standard exchanges. NYC had seven-digit dialing since the 1930s, long before many other places.
My original and current exchange is REgent 1. Has been since about 1957, right before I was born. Of course now it's just 731. We don't have ten-digit dialing yet, but will sometime in 2016 or 2017 because they're overlaying another area code. Yuck!
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