PERIODICALLY, I check on my favorite bits of infrastructure around town and sometimes I’m disappointed, like when I saw the Twinlamp at 5th Avenue and 28th Street had disappeared. Well, at the end of that 28th Street walk I was making my way back to Grand Central (call it Station or Terminal, I don’t care) and I was sure to check out this fire alarm.
When alarms of this type first appeared in the 1910s, most of them had shafts at the top that contained electric lightbulbs in several varieties of housing. As the decades past this method was winnowed out and the alarms were marked by bulbs on streetlamps contained in red glass globes, then orange plastic globes, then orange plastic cylinders, as you see here. This seems to be the only one remaining in NYC with that orange plastic cylinder still in place, though the bulb hasn’t been replaced in a long time. I’, just surprised it’s hiding in plain sight at one of NYC’s busies intersections, Park and East 34th.
Actually this alarm, which no longer even functions as an alarm (the pull lever has been removed) is in better shape than I’ve seen it in in a long while because previously the door on the base was removed, exposing its inner works. At least that was replaced, and the alarm seems to have gotten a recent red paint job. It’s sstanding guard in case the FDNY ever wants to activate it.
In the building on the left, eons ago, I interviewed for a mechanicals job at Traansperfect Translations and I left thinking I had it in the bag. I didn’t; my interviewer was fired soon after he talked to me!
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6/17/24