FOLLOWING a relative period of inactivity due to various ailments, I have been gradually getting back into the swing and visiting realms where I haven’t appeared in recent years. One is Sheepshead Bay, a neighborhood I first became aware of in my childhood because it was directly connected to Bay Ridge with a bus route, and one parent or the other, knowing my enthusiasm for Brooklyn explorations and lampposts, would often sally forth with me on Saturday or Sunday.
I am always heartened to see retro versions of original BMT hooded platform lamps, and there’s a batch at the Sheepshead Bay Road station on the Q train. When first installed in the 1910s these type of platform lamps used incandescent bulbs. In recent decades, modern versions originally using sodium lights were installed during station renovations. Unfortunately in the conversion to LED lamps, modern LED fixtures have been crudely plopped on the retro poles, as has occurred at Queensboro Plaza or Court Square, both on the #7 train.
The poles at Sheepshead Bay, though, reveal that the “hoods” don’t have to be sacrificed to make way for new LEDs, as these “screw-in” bulbs reveal.
In 1970, these twin incandescent lamps were in use at Sheepshead Bay, which still had wood plank platforms. These lamps were later replaced by post tops and ultimately by the retro “hoodies.” Photo: NYCsubway.org
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8/26/25
3 comments
LED or not, the retro lamps are lot better looking than the crapola shoebox lamp stanchions that appeared on the Brighton, Culver and West End lines back in the mid 80s.
I guess no one noticed the similarity between the two photos that were taken 55 years apart. In both photos the lights are burning in the middle of the day. I visited a friend yesterday and got off at this Sheepshead Bay station. Getting on at 30th Avenue in Astoria all the station lights were on, as were the lights at Broadway, 36th Avenue and 39th Avenue. Going through Brooklyn, at least 15 elevated stations had all the lights burning. How the tens of thousands of riders and hundreds of TA maintenance workers ,Supervisors,and TA executives, can see this and not do something is beyond me.
It is not just the Transit. It is impossible to find a Housing Authority project where at least some of the lights are not burning during the day. Hundreds, maybe thousands of streetlights are dayburning. If I call in ten lights I am am lucky if one is repaired.
I happened to find a Housing Authority maintenance worker outside of a project where every light was on at one in the afternoon.
I asked him why the lights were on during the day. In typical City worker fashion he looked at me as if I had just emerged from a flying saucer. I’m beginning to think our civilization is doomed.
And many lamps in Flushing Meadows dayburn, too