In 2026, it’s easy to imagine how oddly modern and strange that modular Donald Deskey lampposts, named for their designer, a commercial artist who also designed the Gleem toothpaste tube, Joy detergent bottle and the Radio City Music Hall interiors, when they first appeared in 1958. If anyone noticed lampposts at all then (I was one year old) they were still mostly the fancy ones with the ornate metal ironwork that had first appeared in the 1890s. More streamlined 8-sides poles began to supplant them in 1950, but it was a gradual process and the wholesale demolition of the castirons didn’t happen until the mid-1960s.
Best and the Brightest, NY Times 2010
The “Deskey” was designed as adaptable and modular, and nowhere was that more in evidence than on 5th Avenue, where double-armed Deskeys were installed in 1965 to replace the Queen of Avenue’s flock of Twinlamps (themselves in two separate designs). They were bronze-colored with two S-shaped arms and had attachments to hold stoplight arms, fire alarm lamps, and flags. The style was restricted to streets between 32nd and 60th Streets. Today, five or six remain, as they are changed out as they fail to whatever the Department of Transportation has in the lamppost yard. 5th Avenue deserves its own lamppost design, and I wish another one could be designed. Donald Deskey passed away in 1989.
I fired off this shot in May 2026 at 5th Avenue and 47th Street, at the edge of the Diamond District. I thought the Deskey made an interesting contrast with the zigzaggy facade of #44 West 47th, in the middle of the block between 5th and 6th Avenues. If you want an apartment there, prepare to shell out seven figures. (I can’t imagine living in so densely packed an area, no matter how luxury the apartment).
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6/30/26