As is well known to readers of Forgotten New York, the slotted Donald Deskey lamps, whose design was created by the famed interior designer of Radio City Music Hall, was introduced on Broadway and Murray Street near City Hall in 1959 and by 1962 had begin to populate both city streets and also parkways and expressways. Their heyday was done by the early 1970s, but hundreds can still be found around town.
The original design vastly outnumbers its permutations such as the bronze 5th Avenue Twin Deskeys introduced in 1965. However, the design is eminently adaptable and has also been used for stoplights and longer-necked versions used on expressways. These were never very common but were also used on side streets such as Riverside Drive, shown here. This called for a twin bracket, but there’s a single version used on even wider roads that has longer necks and two attachments instead of the one we have here. In addition, there’s am extra-long twin Deskey that has a lengthy crossbar connecting the two necks. It looked wild in 1962 and still looks like something out of the future even today. One of these days I’ll gather them all on one page.
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5/24/22