THE Donald Deskey lamppost, introduced in 1958, was a very adaptable and modular beast. Its most frequent use was the single-arm mast, and though SLECO stopped producing them around 1980, hundreds can still be seen on NYC streets. They were once very frequently seen on NYC parkways and expressways; in the 1970s, there was the unusual pairing of the Deskey lamp with Westinghouse AK-10 cuplights. Probably the most famed Deskey “special” was the bronze, twin-masted versions installed on 5th Avenue in 1965, only a handful of which remain today.
Especially wide streets received extended mast Deskeys, which, in their single versions, sported two masts instead of one; in their Twin versions, they had a lengthy crossbar between the two masts. But here, on the Bruckner Expressway in Schuylerville just west of its junction with the Throgs Neck Expressway, you have a run of double mast dwarf extended Deskeys, supported on platforms jutting out from the expressway wall in the open cut; other, slightly taller Dwarves can be found at the guardrails elsewhere.
This is the rarest Deskey permutation in the city; I can’t remember another location where they are employed.
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2/8/23