I have not often mentioned 5th Avenue’s signature stoplight, the Mercury, a bronze pole with red and green lamps placed catercorner on 5th Avenue from Washington Square to 59th Street between 1931 and 1968. That’s because I have but vague memories of them, since they were in place only until I was eleven years old. The Twins served side by side with 5th Avenue’s Twinlamps (in two different styles) until 1965, when special versions of Donald Deskey poles replaced them.
The Mercury stoplights were used only on 5th Avenue, and were designed by Joseph H. Freedlander and manufactured by the Reliance Bronze and Steel Corporation in Brooklyn. I call them the Mercurys because a very small statuette of Mercury, the Roman god of commerce and speed, was placed atop each stoplight. Sadly, none of the poles seem to have been saved, except perhaps in private collections, though the Museum of the City of New York has one or two of the Mercury statuettes. And, for a short time after the Deskeys were installed in 1965, some of the Mercurys found their way onto those poles, but none of those survive, either; in any case the Deskey twins, which have a special mastarm for stoplights, are being phased out and between 5 and 10 remain.
A weakness of the Mercury stoplights from my point of view is that the red and green signals have no sun visors, and may have been difficult to make out if the sun was shining on them. 5th Avenue was open to two-way traffic until 1966, and after that, just southbound traffic.
There’s more to see in this tax photo (courtesy the Facebook group “Forgotten History: The NYC Two-Color traffic Light”) than just the Mercury stoplight. One Fifth Avenue was a hotel built in 1926 at East 8th Street, with a restaurant called One Fifth on the ground floor I would stop in in the 1980s.
For decades, creatives of all types, including celebs, have made a mad dash toward the historic structure. Candace Bushnell based her 2008 novel on the building’s mystique and even titled the book after its address. Anna Wintour and the cast of Saturday Night Live (respectively) regularly made their way down to the building’s first-floor restaurant back in the late ’80s. [Architectural Digest]
Metal bus stop signs of this type were still used on occasion into the 1960s, as were the small pole-attached slot mailboxes. The white sign on the lamppost points to the 4th Street subway station on 6th Avenue. The “humpback” street signs served until the early 1960s.
Check out the ForgottenBook, take a look at the gift shop. As always, “comment…as you see fit.” I earn a small payment when you click on any ad on the site.
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