Area code 513


Area code 513 is a telephone area code in the North American Numbering Plan for the southwest of the U.S. state of Ohio, including Cincinnati and surrounding cities, such as Forest Park, Hamilton, Lebanon, West Chester, Mason, Maineville, Middletown, Norwood, Oxford, Harrison, Cleves, Miamitown, and Trenton.

History

Area code 513 is one of the 86 original area codes established in 1947, when it designated a numbering plan area that comprised the entire southwestern quadrant of Ohio. Due to the proliferation of cell phones and pagers in the 1990s, the numbering plan area had to be split in 1996 to provide more central office prefixes and telephone numbers. The eastern and northern portions, including Dayton received area code 937.
As the Cincinnati LATA extends into northern Kentucky and southeastern Indiana, area code 513 is still used by a large number of cell phone users on the Kentucky and Indiana sides of the Cincinnati area.
In 2000, area code 283 was assigned to numbering plan area 513 for a future overlay plan. Permissive dialing began on January 15, 2001, but the implementation was suspended, because if the economic downturn and the return of numbers as a result of the abandonment of service by competitive local telephone companies. As projected, 283 will not need to be implemented until at least 2024. This makes Cincinnati one of the largest cities where seven-digit dialing is still possible.
Originally, 513 was slated to cover the western third of Iowa—basically, everything west of Des Moines. Cities designated for coverage included Sioux City and Council Bluffs. Instead, they ended up getting 712.
Very similar to how Manhattan is known as "212", Cincinnati is sometimes colloquially referred to as the "513".