Temporary lampposts, used when a regular lamp has fallen over, been crashed into, or is under repair for whatever reason, consist of simple wooden conical bases in which the electric works are contained, and a simple pipe to hold the luminaire. Temporary posts of this type have neen used for nearly a century.
My favorite examples of the genre can be seen along 2nd Avenue in the Upper East Side, which has been ripped up by construction of the previously mythical Second Avenue Subway. They’ve been festooned with street signs, traffic control signs and one way signs.
Possibly the most enduring form of the genre have been these “temporary” lamps on the Park Avenue Grand Central Terminal viaduct, which have been here since the late 1980s.
3/1/13
3 comments
Re: The top photo of the temporary light with conical wooden base. Those aren’t new at all. I’ve seen them as a kid growing up in Brooklyn as far back as the early 1960’s.
I think they used to painted yellow and the one s I remember had a “W” stenciled on the sides for Welsbach, the electrical contractor who maintained the streetlights at that time.
When my neighborhood in Flatbush had mercury vapor lights, the temporary ones were incandescent lights, mostly Westinghouse AK-10 cuplights as you described.
I said that they have been used for decades.
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