Before it was Tribeca, it was the Lower West Side…and it had a lot of cast-iron lamps. Take a look at a former woebegone area. We’ll talk about the coelacanth…

As many Bishops Crooks lampposts that are still standing…there are legions of these old warriors that are no more. As late as the early to mid 1980s, the streets of…

Wedges, scoopers, turtlebeaks and nozzles! When the talk turns to street lighting, as it often does with me and Forgotten Fans (remember those cone-shaped things that turned up on bishops…

I’ll admit it. There’s a big hole in my information on NYC lamppost manufacturers and makes, since I’ve not a clue of these designs’ actual names, nor their manufacturers. These…

Lamppost design of yore can be seen in surviving original walkway lampposts that carry pedestrian traffic across busy highways such as the Long Island Expressway and Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Many carry…

Throughout the five boroughs, there are scattered some streetlamps that look as if they didn’t eat their spinach during their formative years. Their growth seems stunted. Actually, the city has…

Here we present some old designs that don’t easily fit the above categories, including the remains of the last gaslight-era lamp left standing.     LEFT: This unprepossessing little pole,…

In New York City, between the golden age of cast-iron lampposts, approximately 1895 and 1950, and prior to the brave new world of green-white fluorescent bulbs (which held sway between…

This abandoned, rusty bishops crook lamppost in an empty lot in the Lower East Side is an important one, because not only is it an increasingly rare cast iron remnant…but it…

Throughout New York, lampposts are mounted on walls under special circumstances. Sometimes, there is not enough room on a narrow sidewalk to safely install a complete lamppost. At other locations,…

Constructed exclusively to light the network of parkways that Robert Moses constructed beginning in the Twenties, these distinctive poles are made of both wood and iron. Some are still in…

New York City has preserved more of the classic Bishop Crook lampposts than any other of the cast-iron designs. In fact, the city has been busy since the 1980s bringing…