I was amazed to see this pair of vintage General Electric M400 lamps, on a Twin post in the parking lot of the GW Supermarket in Northern Boulevard just east of Parsons. It’s the only lamppost in the lot, and since I haven’t been by here at night, I wonder if they light up in the pale greenish white that these mercury vapor fixtures glow in. When first coming on, they give an audible buzz and are bright green, but gradually brighten to almost white.
From 1962-1975 or so, the General Electric M400s battled for supremacy with Westinghouse Silverliner OV-25s on New York City streets. There was no third party, it was strictly one or the other. Rarely did the two makes mix much; flocks of them were installed at once. Now and then, a Silverliner would be seen in GE territory, or vice versa, but that was when a lamp failed and the then-Department of Traffic installed whatever they had in the yard. GE and Westinghouse also battled on side streets, with glass reflector-less models.
GE M400s first appeared, along with SLECO Donald Deskey poles, in 1958 on Broadway in the City Hall Park area, but weren’t installed en masse until 1960-1962. By 1972, both the Westy and GE’s days were numbered, as new sodium versions of the GE were making inroads. Until 2009, when a massive purge took out the remaining mercury vapors, a handful still lit streets, mainly in out of the way areas, like Little Neck, where I found a few when I arrived in 2007. In 2017, the LED Revolution, in various makes by borough, took out the last stragglers.
Boston also employed numerous GEs and Westys, until its own LED Revolution around the same time as NYC’s. I. imagine the same is true in many locales.
Behind the lamp is a new building, Northern Parc Condominium, which adheres to the blue-glass regulation new NYC residential buildings must conform.
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6/5/24