In my now lost youth, I would bicycle all over Brooklyn and Queens from Bay Ridge before bicycling became a religion at whose altar politicians worshiped, creating green bicycle lanes and closing streets. I was on my own on a bike for over 30 years, and other than a few arguments with “doorers,” never met with an accident, since I obeyed traffic signals and lights and yielded to much larger vehicles, pedestrians, dogs and other bicyclists. For me it was the only way to go.
I pedaled all the way out to Cypress Hills and Woodhaven on occasion, on the Brooklyn-Queens border. One day I was following the border, which runs for a few blocks down the center of Eldert Lane. When I reached 95th Avenue I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was a lamppost that I believed long extinct, a telephone pole double-mast with a Westinghouse incandescent cuplight. In addition, this model had the fire alarm indicator lamp appended from the crossbar, common in this particular model.
It was like those fish caught in the Indian Ocean thought from the fossil record to have been extinct for 65 million years, the coelacanth. I had found a living fossil! I first found it in the late 1970s or early 1980s, and on subsequent bicycle trips would diligently check on it. In those years, I had no inkling of a Landmarks Preservation Commission and had I known, I would have intensely lobbied for its preservation. The double mast lasted shortly into the Forgotten NY era, though its fire alarm lamp plastic orange cover dropped off, until it was finally replaced by a regulation short finned mast in 1999 or 2000 with a sodium lamp attached; it since has been converted to LED. Sick transit, Gloria!
Since the lamp was located on the southeast corner, and the Brooklyn-Queens line jogged east on 95th Avenue with the line down the center of the street, the double mast was located in Queens. 95th Avenue is one of the few streets that span three boroughs, Kings, Queens and Nassau. I explain that occurrence on this FNY page.
Photos courtesy Bob Mulero
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5/15/23