FAREWELL TO ANOTHER TWIN?

PARDON the appearance to today’s photos of the Type 24 Twin lamp on 5th Avenue — I had to use very old photos that were saved very small because Forgotten NY was accessed by dial-up modem 25 years ago — and I hadn’t been by this particular specimen in awhile. I was scuttling east on 28th Street on a spring Sunday, and part of my purpose was to get a fresh photo of this very pole. But bad news awaited.

That Twin had vanished and was replaced by a temporary Twin with two LED fixtures. In recent years, this Twin sported two SLECO “cuplight” lamps with incandescent bulbs. By 2016, one had burned out and in recent years, neither one was working. I imagine the Department of Transportation thought enough was enough. Will the Twin return? It’s 50-50. A few tears ago, a classic Twin at 6th Avenue and Walker Street was taken down, but replaced a year or so later with a partial paint job, but otherwise unaltered.

The news wasn’t as good for other 5th Avenue Twins. In 2013, a landmarked Twin at 5th and West 32nd, which had been listing for awhile, was replaced by a stoplight. A few years earlier, in 2005, a truck hit this Twin, one of Madison Square’s collection of classic Twins, and it never recovered. If the 28th Street pole doesn’t return, 5th Avenue will be down to just three 20th Century Twins, one at 19th Street and two remaining in Madison Square (one of which is teh original Type 3 design introduced in 1892). It hasn’t been a good year for classic lamps, as a 1910s Type 1 Bishop Crookn at Lafayette and Canal Streets was toppled (will it be back)? also vanished.

On the other hand, a wall bracket Crook on Nassau near Beekman at City Hall was removed and refurbished in 2021, and the ancient Type F on West 13th between 6th and 7th Avenues got a new Bell LED fixture in 2024, though I wish they could have fixed its cuplight instead.

This list of landmarked lamps was compiled in 1997; many have vanished.

If the city repairs and puts back the 28th Street Twin, you’ll read about it here in Forgotten NY.

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6/3/24