You find the darndest things, just walking around with a camera. At Francis Lewis Boulevard and 35th Avenue there’s a mini-mall, a shopping center really, anchored by a Food Universe supermarket (in Little Neck, we have the country’s smallest Stop & Shop). Ringing the parking lot by the fence is a group of cylindrical-shafted lampposts, all of which are boasting 1950s GE Form 400 clamshell lamps. What a find!
The General Electric Form 400 was among the first mercury vapor streetlamps on the market. It was introduced around 1950, or just a few years after that. The “clamshell” design closely resembled its Westinghouse counterpart, the OV 20. Though the Form 400s never gained a foothold in New York City they did see plenty of action in other municipalities, and for about ten years, NYC’s then-Department of Traffic did deploy the Form 400s sibling, the Form 109, on 6th Avenue and selected side streets.
General Electric streetlamp nomenclature can be a bit confusing. We’ve seen the Form 400 above, but this model, the M400, saw plenty of action on NYC streets, battling for supremacy throughout the 1960s and in to the 1970s with the Westinghouse “Silverliner” OV25. Though both were supplanted by various sodium lamp models and then by 2017 by LEDs, several M400s can still be spotted in out of the way NYC locales, and in Hoboken, NJ, there are still several functioning ones including this dayburner.
This Auburndale parking lot, though, is its predecessor Form 400’s only NYC stronghold.
Check out the ForgottenBook, take a look at the gift shop, and as always, “comment…as you see fit.”
12/13/20
6 comments
Most likely the lights remain because it’s a privately owned parking lot and the owner sees no pressing need to replace them. Finding replacement bulbs would be time consuming if even possible. Fun fact: most people who buy household size mercury vapor bulbs use them for reptile tank heating.
Food Universe is one of store names Key Foods uses.
Little Neck’s Stop&Shop competes, uh, neck to neck with the store on White Plains Road in Eastchester for the dubious “smallest in chain” award. Regardless of square footage, I might be inclined to give Eastchester the award because I’m almost certain it was purpose-built as a S&S, while Little Neck was a conversion from something else (possibly a CVS though I’m not 100% on that). Until about five years ago the S&S in Merrick would have been the winner/loser, but it relocated to a much larger location.
I think Little Neck was a Waldbaum’s.
Original store at Northern Blvd. and Marathon Parkway was Bohack, and opened around 1960. Remember it because then I lived nearby. Bohack went out of business in 1977, and by then I lived elsewhere and did not pass that location regularly. Don’t remember what stores occupied that location, but it’s good to see that it’s still a supermarket and not a fancy boutique.
Was Grand Union at that location at one time?
Not sure, but there was a Grand Union about a mile to the east, just over the Nassau line in Great Neck. It was on Great Neck Road just after it veers away from Northern Blvd, Today it’s an Asian supermarket.. Grand Union is another “fallen flag” in the supermarket world.
What a gorgeous shot of the green lamp