SOUTH STREET RELIC

by Kevin Walsh

WELL, you don’t see too many of these any more. I’d estimate there are approximately 25 or 30 at the most of these curved-mast octagonal shaft lampposts around town, with and without their thin support brackets. They’re usually found lurking around overpasses, and that’s where we find this one, at the eastern stretch of Robert F. Wagner Senior Place as it meets South Street under the spaghetti ramps that connect the Brooklyn Bridge and the East River Drive, which becomes the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive further north at Montgomery Street.

These lamps were the first iterations of the octagonal shafts, which were introduced in 1950. After just a few years, they were supplanted by straighter masts without a support bracket. Quite a few of the original 1950s poles are still around…but the curved masts and brackets were replaced with taller cobra neck masts beginning in the 1960s. But when I first started exploring Brooklyn on bus rides at age 5 (with one or both parents, of course) the curved masts were quite common, supporting incandescent SLECO AK-10 “cuplights.”

If you follow Wagner Place (careful, there’s no sidewalk) you’ll also see some of the few remaining cross-shaped “Whitestone” lamps, first used on the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge but then employed on parkways throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s.

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4/3/24

5 comments

chris April 4, 2024 - 4:27 am

I knew that area well as a kid as the city used to temporarily store abandoned cars
there back in the ’60s.On weekends people descended on them to get parts for
their Chebbies and gypsy cabs.Make a real party out of it.Take the speakers out of
the car and put them on the roof to better hear WADO at full blast.The cuchifrito man
with his push cart(unlicensed of course)did a booming business.Im suprrised no one ever
got killed from a car falling on them as the city stacked them 2,3 cars high and some guy
would be yanking on some part and that whole stack would be just swaying back and forth…

Reply
spinetingler April 4, 2024 - 12:48 pm

Lamppost posts are what got me hooked on FNY. (such a specialty niche). Glad to see a new one.

Reply
The Chief (tm) April 6, 2024 - 10:53 am

And they say that on certain nights — when the wind blows just right — you can still hear the footfalls of Dustin Hoffman fleeing from “Battlin'” Billy Devane on the access ramps above.

Reply
S.+Saltzman April 9, 2024 - 2:21 pm

Interesting that the pole is so completely rusted. The pole missed the last street light painting cycle in 1991. The pole also missed the 2005/2006 “Jodie’s Law” insulating paint program.

Reply
Kevin Walsh April 9, 2024 - 10:17 pm

I don’t think the city paints completely rusted poles and winds up replacing them eventually.

Reply

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