It’s always a pleasure to check on 5th Avenue’s dwindling set of Twinlamps. A handful of the Queen of Avenue’s “twins,” actually the second Twinlamp design, remain along 5th between 14th and 23rd Streets, but we’re down about two or three over the last decade or so. The original design, first installed in 1896 and among the first electric-powered lampposts in the city, featured shorter masts and a somewhat “busier” ornamental design. Only one remains, at Madison Square, 5th Avenue at 23rd.
This isn’t that pole. It’s the Twin at 5th Avenue and East 19th Street, in front of the former Constable Department Store. It’s one of the few lampposts remaining in NYC that still employs incandescent bulbs that emit a warm yellow glow. I don’t find myself in Manhattan at night much, since my bar prowling and night shift work days are long done, so the only way I know if the bulbs work is if they’re dayburners, like this. While I enjoy seeing dayburners, I know that the bulbs’ active days are limited by keeping them on all day; I imagine the photocell that turns them off at dawn and on at dusk has failed. The city has serviced this lamp in recent years, giving it a new chocolate brown paint job that included its pair of SLECO “cuplights,” which had gone unpainted for decades. This lamp has likely had three or four sets of lamps, from the original “acorn” white glass lamps installed in the 1910s and 1920s, to the Bells from the late 1930s-early 1940s, to the cups of the late 40s and 1950s. The wire you see goes across 5th Avenue to a stoplight across the avenue and it’s likely both are powered by the same source.
In March 2024 I marched 5th Avenue from Washington Square to 30th. Well worn territory for me, I realize, but in Forgotten NY I can spot nuances I had never noticed before, and it’s like walking the avenue for the first time! Results will appear sometime this year.
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3/31/25