Lately I’ve started getting enthusiastic about subway and elevated platform lighting. (Yeah, I know no one else is, really.) Why not? They’re lampposts, too. In NYC there’s a plethora of designs, from throwbacks to the early days in the 1910s, to ultramodern bright white LED lamps. Unfortunately it’s tough for me to really get a handle on platform lamps because it means riding a subway line and getting off at each station to get pictures, which is rather inconvenient; so I get shots when I can.
In Woodside, along the #7 Flushing line elevated in the 33rd, 40th, 46th, and Woodside/61st Street stations (skipping 52nd Street) we have what I call Bigloops, which are very heavy iron lamps with full curved apices, much like Bishop Crook lamps of old, but completely unadorned. They have heavy cylindrical glass reflectors that protect yellow sodium lights; thus far, the MTA hasn’t figured out how to convert them to bright white LEDs.
These lamps appeared when the Flushing Line stations along Queens Boulevard were renovated in the 1990s; 61st/Woodside got “the treatment” at about the same time, which left 52nd Street out; it still has its 1950s corrugated windscreens and original 1915 stanchions holding sodium lights.
Check out the ForgottenBook, take a look at the gift shop, and as always, “comment…as you see fit.”
12/11/20