DAVITS OF HAVEMEYER

SINCE the fabulous Fifties, the default streetlamp in New York City is an octagonal (8-sided) aluminum shaft of varying heights, topped with either a straight mast or a curving “cobra neck.” the earliest versions in the Fifties sported a curved mast with a thinner brace; a few of those survive today, if you know where to look. The 60s and 70s saw the Donald Deskey lamp catch on. However, years before Williamsburg became a hipster haven and then “gentrified” to become a richie haven, it sported lamppost designs found nowhere else, likely the products of experimentation as the then Department of Traffic rolled out new designs that never caught on elsewhere. On Lee Avenue and Roebling Street you’ll find the blue lamps I call “the Williamsburgs.”

On Havemeyer Street between Broadway and Metropolitan Avenue, on three corners, you’ll see these designs, simple cylindrical brown pipes with curved masts. Since I shot this photo at South 3rd in 2016, the sodium fixture has been replaced with a bright white LED. These type of poles with curved shafts are esoterically called “davits”. The Department of Transportation has since gone all in on davits, from full size poles with longer masts (you can see them on Houston Street and Columbia in Brooklyn) and ‘dwarf’ davist found beneath elevated trains, as on 31st street in Astoria and McDonald Avenue in Brooklyn. The design on Havemeyer, though, never was implemented widely.

Havemeyer Street was named for one member or the other of the 19th Century German immigrant Havemeyer family. You can take your pick which one — brothers Frederick C. and William, who opened a sugar refinery in Manhattan; Frederick C. Jr., who opened another sugar factory in Williamsburg; William F., who became a 3-term NYC mayor; F.C. Jr.’s son Henry, who renamed the sugar factory Domino and came to dominate the market. The Domino refinery has been converted to apartments, and other apartment towers as well as a riverside park sprouted alongside it.

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5/18/26