Now that my latest 20th Anniversary presentation has come and gone (at SoHo’s Museum of Interesting Things) I can post some vintage images again from the Dawn of Forgotten NY, 1998-2001.
Actually this is one of the oldest images in FNY that I took myself. I was on a ramble in Riverdale, in the Bronx, on my way to Wave Hill in 1988. However, I had been aware of this “Type G” Corvington for several years before that, at Mosholu Avenue and Post Road. Type G poles were usually used on side streets and parks, but here, it had found its way to Mosholu Avenue, a main east-west drag.
It also carried one of the last working examples of a “junior bell” fixture, a cone-shaped variant on the Bell fixture. Both arrived on NYC streets at about the same time, in the late 1930s. It was still fitted with an incandescent bulb.
Around 2000 or 2001, it was torn down and replaced by a modern octagonal-shaft pole. It was rusting away and did not have regular paint jobs, which may have saved it. The Department of Transportation doesn’t repaint posts with a great deal of rust.
Today, the largest concentration of “Type G’s” can be found on the oval streets of Stuyvesant Town.
Check out the ForgottenBook, take a look at the gift shop, and as always, “comment…as you see fit.”
9/5/19
1 comment
Thanks for clarifying that it was 1988. Like many, I date photos by cars and at first thought this one had been taken in circa 1999 from what you wrote in the first paragraph. “Damn they had some well-preserved oldsters there. What is it with Riverdale? It looks like the South [where cars last much longer because no road salt].”