Area code 914

{{short description|Area code of Westchester County, New York}}

File:New York State and surrounding areas Area codes Jan 2024.png; area code 914 highlighted in yellow]]

Area code 914 is the telephone area code in the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) for Westchester County, New York.

Area code 914 was one of the first area codes announced when the North American Numbering Plan was created in October 1947,{{cite web|title=Area Code History|url=http://www.area-codes.com/area-code-history.asp|publisher=Area-Codes}} when it was assigned to a numbering plan area (NPA) comprising Delaware, Dutchess, Nassau, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Suffolk, Sullivan, Ulster, and Westchester counties, an area largely coextensive with the New York state portion of the New York metropolitan area, excluding New York City, which received area code 212. In 1951, Long Island (Nassau and Suffolk counties) received area code 516 in a split of 914.{{cite web|title=914 Area Code|url=http://www.allareacodes.com/914|publisher=All Area Codes}}

This configuration remained for 49 years. By the end of the 1990s, the increasing demand for cell phones and Internet dial-up connections caused concerns for exhaustion of the numbering pool. In mitigation, numbering plan area 914 was reduced to Westchester County on June 5, 2000. The remainder was assigned the new area code 845. Area code 914 was retained by all cellphones in use in the plan area before the split.

Prior to October 2021, area code 914 had telephone numbers assigned for the central office code 988. In 2020, 988 was designated nationwide as a dialing code for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which created a conflict for exchanges that permit seven-digit dialing. This area code was therefore scheduled to transition to ten-digit dialing by October 24, 2021.{{cite web|url=https://nationalnanpa.com/pdf/PL_556.pdf|date=January 8, 2021|publisher=North American Numbering Plan Administrator |title=Transition to 10-digit dialing (for 988 as 3-digit access to National Suicide Prevention Hotline)|access-date=March 9, 2021}}