I was checking out some 1940 Municipal Archives photos and scrolled over to the Rockaway Beach boardwalk, known officially as Ocean Promenade on maps. I dug those boardwalk lamps, of which I hadn’t seen any photos before; archivists of architecture and tax records in previous decades didn’t waste precious film on taking photos of lampposts, and with the advent of the digital camera, geeks like me can fire away to their heart’s content. It appears the posts were concrete-clad (as remaining classic lamps in Boston are) with a metal mastarm that held a radial-wave fixture that had an incandescent bulb.
The building shown still stands at the boardwalk and Beach 115th Street. It was likely an apartment building in 1940 and today is the Park Inn Home for Adults. Who knows, maybe I’ll wind up there in a few years. Ocean views are relaxing.
The boardwalk, of course, was utterly destroyed by “Superstorm” (just short of a hurricane) Sandy in October 2012, which ripped up Staten Island and the Rockaway Peninsula. When it was rebuilt, wooden boards weren’t employed and instead, thick concrete pads reinforced with sunken steel pilings built above the flood level were used. Sick transit, Gloria!
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7/30/2023