TAKE a look at the detailing on this lamp bracket found at Avenue L and East 99th Street in Canarsie. It once held a lightbulb surrounded by a conical orange reflector shade (and at one time even further back, a globular one) and marked the presence of a nearby fire alarm. It is mounted on a 1950s-era octagonal lamppost shaft; however, this style of bracket wasn’t frequently found on octagonal poles.
They were, though, found in the hundreds on castiron bishop crook, type F and Corvington poles, such as the restored Warren Street bishop crook near Greenwich Street in Tribeca, and a flock of them remain on Type G posts in Stuyvesant Town. That’s it, save this holdover in Canarsie. The city is no longer servicing fire alarm indicators, which are now small red lamps mounted atop the regular street light fixtures (a bad place for them, since the streetlamp usually outshines them).
When octagonal poles began their takeover in the 1950s and 1960s, fire alarm indicator lamps were usually mounted at the top of the shaft, with the regular streetlamps at the end of the shaft and thus fare enough away from the other that they didn’t compete. Later on, they also were mounted on J-shaped brackets, also employed on telephone poles.
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11/12/24