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Streetlamp, 5th Ave & 32nd Street, Manhattan

Hidden along the highways and byways of New York City are ancient lampposts, of cast-iron design and otherwise, that date back 100 years in some cases. On this page are presented just a few of the lamps that light the way to the past.

THE DONALDS Remaining Fifth Avenue double Deskey lamps.

FIVE FOR LIGHTING Streetlamp themes on the Queen of Avenues

LAMPPOST ALLSORTS from the collection of Bob Mulero.

ANCIEN RÉGIME Before the Corvingtons and Crooks took over, there were all kinds of weird lampposts on the scene..

BRIDGE TOO FAR. Until recently, strange and wondrous lamppost designs could be found on NYC bridges.

MERCURY FALLING. 1960s luminaires disappearing, in NYC at least.

BELIEVE IT! NYC lampposts that break the mold, and some doodling from your webmaster.

UNDER THE BRIDGE. Outmoded designs hide under bridges.

GUMBALL RALLY. A flock of unusual poles and luminaires in Williamsburg.

SO LONG, OLD FRIEND The Department of Transportation takes out some lamppost history.

THROWING THEM A CURVE. Lamppost designs at the dawn of the modern era.

TALES OF THE T-POLES. NYC's variety of telephone pole lighting fixtures over the decades.

CHANGING OF THE GUARD Documenting the beginning of the end of the ornate castirons in 1960.

THOSE GOLDURNED DESKEYS. NYC's most versatile lamppost design, by the man who designed Radio City..

HOW TO FRAME A CROOK. How the Department of Transportation defaced classic cast iron poles in the 1980s..

NOW YOU DON'T SEE IT...NOW YOU DO? The odyssey of a Queensboro Bridge light stanchion..

STOPPED SHORT. We remember stoplight designs of the past.

HARLEM NOCTURNE. Some extremely old posts in Harlem have survived.

JETSON WOULD LOVE IT. Space age design on the East Side--that's 60 years old!

THE LAMPS OF PRE-BECA. 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 and H.R. Giger, too.

EVEN MORE CROOKS. The evolution of NYCs most popular pre-1950 lamppost.

WEDGE WAY YOU GOIN', BILLY? Ancient lamps that held sway briefly in the 1960s...wedges, scoopers, turtlebeaks and nozzles!

WALKWAY LAMPS. Pedestrian lamps over expressways reveal designs of long ago.

BISHOP'S CROOKS. Shaped like a bishop's staff, these distinctive poles first began appearing on New York City streets in the 1890s.

LONG-ARMED POLES. Cousins of the bishop's crooks, these cast-iron poles feature long mast arms that stretch over the street and were built to illuminate wider avenues.

"SEVENTH AVENUE" POLES. Appearing to be a hybrid of the bishop's crooks and long-armed poles, these distinctive lamps originally found a home on Seventh Avenue, though today they're generally used for decorative effect in bridges and parks.

TWIN MASTS. Used to light wide boulevards such as the Grand Concourse and Queens Boulevard in the past, and on Fifth Avenue, remaining Twins can occasionally be found on some main streets and in parks.

WONDERFUL WOODIES. 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 but you have to know where to look!

WALL LIGHTS. The City has placed cast-iron masts on buildings where sidewalk space did not allow sufficient room for a proper streetlight pole.

STOPLIGHTS. Relatively undocumented, NYC stoplights have undergone gradual transformations over the years. They started out as clones of the long-masted lampposts.

MID-PERIOD LAMPS. Between the cast-iron era and today's modern streetlighting era, there was an interregnum that presented some odd-looking (to our eyes today) combinations. Find some of them here.

CRESCENT MOONS. Beginning in the 1940s, crescent-shaped diffusers began popping up on side streets and under overpasses. There are still a few of them left and some are actually working.

THE LAST GASLIGHT. 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.

DWARVES. Some really strange streetlamps that have to make do to fit under elevated trains and around airports.

TARNISHED SHERRIFF'S STAR. A very special lamppost that not only shows an abandoned lamppost design ... but also a forgotten neighborhood!

Contact me at erpietri@earthlink.net!

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