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