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