During my walk down Union Turnpike between Little Neck Parkway and 164th Street, with some detours to the Motor Parkway (chronicled on this FNY page) of course I also took note of Union Turnpike’s median lampposts which are all of the Twin persuasion.
Above is a surviving Deskey at 195th Street. It was probably installed sometime in the early to mid-1960s, as it has the original fire alarm lamp mode. (Donald Deskey posts, designed by the same architectural stylist who designed the Radio City Music Hall interiors, had a unique fire alarm light design that, along with the conventional signal installed on other makes, never really fit properly and often had to be reattached with tape.)
Surviving double mast lampposts, mounted on octagonal-shafted posts, are becoming increasingly rare. Even rarer are numbers with intact fire alarm indicators mounted at the top of the shaft!
The newer practice is to place the alarm lamps on the photocell, as seen here at 167th Street.
“Comment…as you see fit.”
5/22/17
3 comments
And it is the only post in the photo that hasn’t had it luminaires replaced with LED fixtures….yet.
The new LED fixtures are too high and are almost impossible to see in the daytime. I understand the need for the LED fixtures as they last a long time and use comparably less electricity, but they should be at least placed in the same area as where the old fixture were kept.
I just wanted to correct you on the fire alarm tape situation. Whenever a bulb dies on a fixture (or fire indicator at the time), they put a piece of black tape around the surface. This gets the DOT repair team know that a bulb needs to be changed out, etc…….they use black tape to change out a bulb, green tape to let everyone know that it’s been replaced and working, red tape to indicate a bad photocell, fixture, etc and yellow/black caution tape to add power to the unit.