As many who look at Forgotten NY know, I’m a streetlamp fanatic and have been since at least 1962 at age five, when I woke up one morning to find that the chocolate-colored ornate castiron lampposts had mostly been replaced by more streamlined poles of various species, most of them with eight-sided shafts (so that I call them “octapoles”) about 20 feet in height, made of silvery aluminum. Others were the odd-looking, curved-mast Donald Deskey poles, with two slots per pole that were used to hold various mastarms. My enthusiasm for the next 60 years has never flagged.
Overpasses, or streets covered by elevated trains, are often fruitful for ancient lamppost hunting as the Department of Transportation often overlooks older lampposts secreted there. I have written about Jamaica Avenue’s collection in the past. Here’s one such entry, at 111th Street. Most stretches of the lengthy avenue have had their 1960s-era poles replaced by L-shaped, brown poles I call (naturally) the Brownies; they originally held large globular fixtures that had Holophane bucket lamps inside. Most of them now have simply designed LED lamps that glow bright white. In recent years, the city has supplanted these with post-top LED lights. Other “el” avenues such as McDonald and Roosevelt Avenue have gotten dwarf davit poles, in which the upright shaft curves over the street at its apex.
Here at 111th, though, a 1960s cylindrical pole that originally carries a mastarm and a green/white mercury lamp is still holding forth, accompanied by a Brownie that was apparently once meant to replace it. It also has a second mastarm and a lamp illuminating the sidewalk. thus you have three streetlamps where there would ordinarily be one.
Why does this stuff fascinate me? A shrink may be able to figure it out but I’m having too much fun to see one.
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8/7/24
2 comments
So,I like fake lighthouses.They’re similar in a way.My favorite one is tall and made of granite in an old
Jewish cemetery in New Orleans.It must have cost some bucks.It had a burnt out yellow light bulb at the
top but nobody bothered to replace it.Must have been kind of creepy walking by at night and seeing it on.
Like the dead are trying to get your attention.
The NYCDOT can take years to install approved new streetlights. Way back in 2018 our local civic organization here on S.I. requested a few new streetlights to brighten up a few poorly lit locations. The requests were approved but most the lights have yet to be installed. Our tax dollars hard at work! LOL!