THE story of Van Cortlandt Park begins in 1699, when future NYC mayor Jacobus Van Cortlandt bought a large tract of the Frederick Philipse holdings in the northern Bronx. The…
Van Cortlandt Park
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WHEELER Reflector Co. primarily produced traditional style pendant street lamps. When NYC introduced the finned telephone pole streetlamp masts in the 1950s, the flat radial wave incandescent lamps in use…
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NEW York’s first water system was built between 1837 and 1842. Prior to those years, water was obtained from cisterns, wells and barrels from rain. Construction began in 1837 on…
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THE Amalgamated Houses, seen here on Van Cortlandt Park South and Hillman Avenue, was the first union-sponsored housing cooperative in the United States, sponsored by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union…
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I have begun to pay more attention to platform lighting on elevated subway stations, which comes in a variety of posts from the earliest ornate ones, to the purely functional…
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Continued from Part 1 I’m continuing my “Under the El” series, which recently visited 31st Street in Astoria, with a walk under Manhattan’s last remaining el, which continues on as…
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Only a few horse troughs, or drinking fountains, remain around town. I’ve noted ones placed by The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and funded by Edith…
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There’s a park trail in Van Cortlandt Park that was once a railroad. It can be reached by walking east through the park directly from the W 242nd Street stop on…
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Street Lamps
TALES OF THE T-POLES. NYC’s variety of telephone pole lighting fixtures over the decades.
by Kevin WalshHeavy snow in NYC winters is unpredictable. A series of winters with little snow can be followed by years of blizzardy winters. But a fearsome, freak blizzard in early March 1888…
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In Country Days in New York City, author Divya Summers describes this old commuter line that is now used for another purpose: The Old Putnam Railroad Track, a defunct railroad bad…
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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…
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Once upon a time, New York City avenues were dominated by a long-armed, chocolate-colored cast-iron pole that my fellow lamppost maven Jeff Saltzman (whose site you can reach here) calls…