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.
As always, “comment…as you see fit.” I earn a small payment when you click on any ad on the site. Take a look at the new JOBS link in the red toolbar at the top of the page on the desktop version, as I also get a small payment when you view a job via that link.
4/3/24