WHAT I have today is possibly the last specimen of what lamppost aficionados (all 14 of us) call the Cuplight, as it’s shaped like an inverted coffee cup with a glass reflector bowl attached. Inside the bowl was an incandescent bulb. These once lit NYC streets by the thousands, and they were as adaptable a lamp fixture as ever existed in NYC. You could find them attached to masts on the octagonal-shaped lampposts introduced in 1950 and are still NYC’s pre-eminent lamppost design. This one, in a parking lot at 2141 Crotona Avenue between East 180th and 181st Street, may just be the last one of those kind remaining.
The Cuplight, though, was a wizard at adaptability. They were introduced in the late 1940s to spell busy Bell and Gumball fixtures on the ornate castiron fixtures still in use, such as Bishop Crooks, longarmed Corvingtons, Twinlamps and Type Fs. A handful of Cuplights can still be found on landmarked lampposts of those types around town. Indeed, one Cuplight on a wall bracket Bishop Crook — also the last of its type — had landmarked status and the Department of Transportation repaired, not replaced it in 2021 and even granted it a LED bulb, proving such a fix could be accomplished.
I had thought that Westinghouse had manufactured the Cups, which gained employment in NYC, Nassau County, and of all places…Pittsburgh. However I have gotten some late intelligence that SLECO (which also made the slotted Donald Deskey-designed poles) was the actual manufacturer. Whoever made them, their numbers are dwindling.
Some of the Cuplights had photocells attached at their tops; some didn’t; this is one that didn’t. Additionally, fire alarm indicator lights, some cylindrical, some globular, were mounted above the Cup. When other lamp fixtures replaced the Cups, the fire alarm lamps were moved to J-shaped pipes mounded on the shaft or atop the shaft itself. I’ll stop here before more of you go to sleep.
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12/12/23
3 comments
I am one of those 14 lamppost aficionados, and I can never get enough of this! I’m a fan of both streetlights and traffic lights. My son is big on traffic lights but does not care much about streetlights.
Make that 15.
I have a pretty extensive collection of catalogs and trade magazine advertisements concerning street lighting equipment but I have never been able to match this luminaire to any manufacturer. I have always assumed that the 3438 series shown in the Welsbach handbook was a custom design by the old Dept. Of Water Supply, Gas and Electricity. The 3438 series was the culmination of 30 years of luminaire design for the tungsten, inert gas filled, incandescent bulb. An article in the Times from 1950 states that there were a little over 165,000 street and park lights in NYC. Each one of these fixtures required at least two bulb replacements annually. The reflectors and globes had to cleaned periodically. If you look at the older types of luminaires in the handbook, they all require either opening latches or unscrewing a thumb nut to gain access to the interior of the luminaire. The 3438 had a latch that could easily be opened with a gloved hand. Once the globe was opened, it could easily be lifted off the hinge for cleaning or glassware replacement. The internal reflector snapped out for cleaning or replacement. But the unique thing about the 3438 is the wide,deep brim that covers the globe latch, the globe hinge and the aluminum ring that holds the globe.
There is an anecdote in the book” Thirty Years of Edison” 1913, by the New York Edison Company. Before 1892, all street lighting was furnished by open carbon arc lamps. The carbon electrodes only lasted about eight to ten hours, and had to be replaced( “Trimmed”) everyday. The book says that during and after a sleet storm, everyone in the company who could use a gasoline torch was called to aid in the replacement of the carbon electrodes. The ice on the luminaires had to be melted so they could be opened to install the new electrodes. Having that wide brim on the 3438 luminaire allowed maintenance to be easily performed all year round in any weather.
There is another example of this luminaire in Astoria. It is in the backyard of a house on 34th avenue. How a pole and luminaire wound up being used as a clothes line pole in some one’s backyard is almost as mysterious as that trolley pole in your later post.