There really is something for everyone in this circa 1960 view (courtesy Brooklyn Historical Society) of Fort Hamilton Parkway looking east at 60th Street. For the vintage car nut, there’s quite a collection for you (name ’em). Old sign people will like the old-school soda fountain and restaurant signs on opposite corners. Architecture fans will admire the gracefully curved roofline of the apartment building and the arched windows; this, and every other building in the photo, is still there.
For me, though, this was and is along the route of the B16 bus, which my parents and I used most of all, and to my ever-widening eyes staring out the window, the chief attraction was the hodgepodge of freestanding and telephone pole-mounted lamps in this transitional era. You can’t see it too well but on the northeast corner was a scrolled mast lamp with the added attraction of a globe-shaped fire alarm indicator. On the right, there’s a guy-wired mast supporting a “smiling” Bell fixture. Years later I found these masts went all the way back to the 1910s and held a variety of lights, including radial wave incandescents.
In a year or so, these lamps would be retired by standard NYC finned telephone pole masts, supporting green-white mercury lamps, which first appeared in the 1950s and still dominate by the thousands today.
“Olive” stoplights with two-bulb Ruleta lights control the traffic, while humpback street signs identify the corner.
2/27/15