I have nothing historical to note or anything horrible to complain about here in Astoria at 30th Drive and 29th Street, except to take note of this “overstuffed” telephone pole. Pertinent of nothing, I can mention that before Queens Streets were given numbers, 30th Drive was called Elm Street and out of the photo on the other corner is a gorgeous apartment building called Elm Towers. In fact scattered throughout Astoria are numerous buildings carrying long-lost names of the streets they were built on before the Great Numbering which took place mainly in the 1920s and 1930s.
I noticed this pole because the Department of Transportation decided that extra lighting was needed because an extra mastarm and lamp was added to the pole despite the presence of the freestanding post, which has been there since the 1950s at least. Additionally, I actually like seeing all those wires the pole is holding up. The dormered building is nearly a century old, if not over a century, while the buildings on either side are much younger.
I talk about infrastructure often but I’m mainly in the dark about what the wires do. Yes, many are telephone wires, for those household still using land lines, though I think land lines will be gone within a decade. Some of the wires are cable television, and cable is at the cusp of its declining years, with streaming servic es controlled by internet connections soon to become the dominant form. What goes on in that big metal box? What do the other wires do? Comments are open.
Though I enjoy seeing telephone poles groaning with wires, I feel that their days are numbered…unless some of those wires are still well within the safety zone for survival. Explanations? Comments are open.
Note: see Comments for a list of wire purposings.
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8/12/24
10 comments
I happened to be walking by that corner when the contractor was installing that additional street light, They explained it was part of the “Vision Zero” program to increase pedestrian safety.
The order of those wires and cables are from the top:
Con Edison 125/216 volt secondary.
RCN(now”Astound”) TV, Internet and landline telephone.
Verizon FIOS Fiber TV, Internet,and landline telephone.
Spectrum(formerly Time Warner) TV, Internet and landline telephone.
That large green box contains batteries and chargers. During a power failure, the batteries supply power to the amplifiers situated along the coaxial cable to boost the signals. If you follow the Spectrum and Astound cables you will see small aluminum boxes.These are the amplifiers. You also need a battery in your modem. Once the batteries are exhausted, that is the end of your TV, Internet and Landline phone service. If you don’t have the optional batteries for FIOS optical terminal in your house, you also lose all service.
Verizon now supplies all landline service through their fiber optic FIOS service. Just about all of their old existing copper cabling is dead and no longer being maintained. The legacy Telephone Companies are now facing a monstrous problem that has dragged down their stock prices. There are thousands of miles of lead jacketed cable in underground conduits, directly buried in the ground and strung overhead on poles that now will require extremely expensive abatement.
You can see one of these ancient lead cables one block down, running on Crescent Street between 30th and 31st Avenues. The cable can be dated as sometime before 1940 because it is supported from the messenger wire by “cable rings”. After about 1940, most cables were secured by “ lashing”,that is, a cable lashing machine wrapped a small wire around the cable and messenger wire for support.
Thanks, S. Saltzman. I’m fascinated with infrastructure, and I learned a lot from your post. That Verizon uses its FIOS to pass landline communication is extremely interesting. I have FIOS coming into my home, but I do not subscribe to FIOS nor do I have a landline (I live in Verizon territory), so the FIOS wires dead end into a box in the basement.
30 Drive intersects 30 St (which also intersects 30 Ave), one of the many numbered streets (and place and lane) that intersects with it’s numbered avenue/road/drive throughout Queens
They better not load that thing with anymore stuff.It looks like its about to keel over
We have a similar situation around the corner from my home on 18th Street and 27th Ave. The old battered leaning pole was replaced and all wires reattached. Unfortunately it created the same situation of leaning because there was no anchor cable attached to offset the weight. The lean is considerable and needs to be addressed again.
About those building names I was wondering about the building named “Palm-Apartments” located at 28-04 33rd. Street. Any info?
Damn spellcheck, it’s the Palc-Apartments.
Telephone poles again.
You might be showing signs of Telehonematis Palus Proclivitas.
I also am fascinated by things that are no longer mounted on poles like this. You can see that above the top most set of wires there is another six feet of pole. There would have been a wooden cross arm on the pole top carrying the wires for the constant current series street light circuit. This pole probably held a radial wave fixture with maybe a 1000 lumen bulb. As a point of reference, a standard household 75 watt incandescent bulb was rated at about 1120 lumens. It is fortunate that the 1940 tax photo of that apartment building was taken at an angle that clearly shows the poles, cross arms ,wires and radial wave fixtures. A series street light system worked like this. A constant current transformer would be mounted on a pole in the area it was to serve. It would be supplied with 2400 volts on the primary side, and the two secondary wires would out fan out going up and streets to be served. That transformer could supply hundreds of fixtures. If the fixtures were equipped with 1000 lumen lamps, each lamp consumed about ten volts. If there were two hundred of these lamps on the series circuit, the constant current transformer would automatically supply about two thousand volts to the lamps, plus a sufficient voltage to care for the “voltage drop” in the wiring. Each fixture was equipped with a “Jones Socket” that came in two parts. The base was secured in the fixture head. The second part of the socket held the lamp and plugged into the base. The second part also carried what was called a” thin film cutout”. If a lamp burned out the film cutout would “break down” and allow the circuit to continue to work. When the worker came to replace the bulb, he would use an insulated stick to pull the second part of the socket out of the base, replace the bulb and put in a new film cutout, and using the stick replace the socket in the base. If the circuit went through a busier street you could put higher lumen rating lamps. A 10,000 lumen lamp at 6.6 amps consumed 88 volts from the circuit. Since a series circuit was high voltage, it had to be carried on cross arms for safety. The last series system in NY City that I know of was gone by 1969 or 1970. Many communities continued to use series circuits and major luminaire manufacturers made both mercury and sodium vapor luminaires to operate on those circuits.
The Welsbach handbook shows several “Jones” series sockets used in NY City luminaires.
I’m looking at that once grand pink house on the corner. It looks like it was on a double lot a hundred or so years ago. It must have been beautiful without the siding, pink paint, and sealed-up windows.