Stoplights



		A New York classic has been disappearing before our very eyes in the past few years...stoplights you had to be able to read to understand. To appease NYC's increasing immigrant population, many of whom do not know English and don't really want to learn it, the city has been busily installing pictograph WALK/DON'T WALK symbols around town, at first in the "outer boroughs" and later in Manhattan. Very few of the old ones remained by late 2003.
Mercer and Prince Streets, Soho, late November 2003

Readable pedestrian signals are by far not the first traffic signal designs to fall by the wayside. On this page we'll see a few more that lasted into the mid and late 1990s...

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when most stoplights in New York City looked like the one on the left, in Auburndale, Queens. They were small, olive-painted poles, two at an intersection.

April 2002: RIP

They were generally outfitted with two-color stoplights, yellow being reserved for special occasions. Caution was signalled by the simultaneous display of red and green for a couple of seconds before the light changed to red. This pole is currently at the corner of Crocheron Avenue and 170th Street in Auburndale, Queens, and has been outfittted with a modern three-color stoplight.

Jeff Saltzman's streetlight site has pictures of some of these poles with their original stoplights attached. You can visit the site here.

Yellow wasn't always the color of NYC stoplights, as odd as that seems now. The stoplights themselves were originally painted the same color as the olive-green poles they were attached to. Yellow began to replace olive green around 1965 or so.



	As of July 2005, this survivor was holding down the corner of 110th Street and 69th Road in Forest Hills.

This pole is at 179th Street and Linden Boulevard in St. Albans, Queens. It's still got its original olive green coat.

Early 2006: RIP

Photos by Jeff Saltzman


		Detail from the post
Jeff Saltzman examines the Linden Blvd. light

The isolated Rockaway Peninsula has some Stoplights That Time Forgot.

Shorefront Parkway and Beach 91st Street

Beach 20th Street and New Haven Avenue.
RIP, 2002

Above: three classic stoplights along the East Drive in Central Park at about 102nd St


		Also in Central Park near Columbus Circle we have this very rare old-style traffic light control box; perhaps the last of its type left in NYC in 2005, when the picture was taken. Bob Mulero

Above, two views of stoplights on Liberty Avenue in Richmond Hill, one of the few thoroughfares in the city that still employs two-light stoplights on certain corners.

These aren't the original lights-- these were installed sometime in the 60s or 70s. Modern stoplights all contain a yellow light, but these don't. The stoplight on the left is still using its original olive-colored pole, while the round aluminum pole on the right was introduced in the 60s.

This unusual Donald Deskey-designed lamppost supports a stoplight on its mastarm, the only such use I've found in the city. It appears on Lexington Avenue just outside Lenox Hill Hospital.

Lexington has since been given retro-Bishop Crook lampposts and this pole has been painted black to match them.

Photo: Kevin Klein

On wider streets, a stoplight that hangs over the street was called for. NYC was once dotted with cast-iron stoplights on the right that fit that bill. They all boasted a distinctive 'Model T; wheel design (as seen above) on their arms. Of course, their stoplights were strictly of the two-color variety and were painted the same olive color as their poles.

These poles were replaced by the modern two-guy wired thick-bodied poles starting in the late Fifties. These poles look like the heftier cousins of the aluminum streetlamps that were going up at about the same time.

Think there aren't any of THESE left, eh?

Well...

Woodside Ave. and 62nd Street, Queens, ca. 1940

This pole is at Park Avenue and E. 46th Street in front of the Helmsley Building. It has a brother pole across Park Avenue. The two poles are probably being protected under the Helmsley aegis.

Only three examples of this kind of stoplight are left in NYC (and the remnants of another.)

These stoplights, and other castiron NYC lampposts, are classified by catalog. In 1934, the NYC Bureau Of Gas and Electricity (which like today's Department of Transportation) was responsible for streetlighting) published The System Electric Companies: Photographs of Street Lighting Equipment As Of November 1, 1934. The pamphlet gave code numbers to every type of streetlight in NYC, identifying 76 types! Of those 76, only 19 have representative samples today. The pamphlet did not classify these posts since they were used for traffic control.

They were first installed on Broadway in 1924.

Deep in the heart of Central Park, on the 86th Street Transverse Road by the police station, is the third such 'wheel' pole left standing. This one is rather short as these poles go (note the lamppost and flagpole in the photo at left.

Some of the gorgeous detail work from the Central Park pole. Remember, there used to be thousands of these dotting NYC streets.



	DONT WALK and WALK signals are now quite rare; the department of Transportation replaced them all with graphic signals in 2003. This one, in 2005, was at Park Avenue and East 35th Street. Meanwhile there are still signs explaining what to do when DONT WALK and WALK are flashing! HOME \| LAMPS \| SUBWAYS & TRAINS \| ADS \| TROLLEYS \| SIGNS \| COBBLESTONES \| STREET SCENES \| YOU'D NEVER BELIEVE YOU'RE IN NYC \| LINKS \| ALLEYS \| NECROLOGY Comments? Complaints? Suggestions? I can take it. Email me at erpietri@earthlink.net. Thanks for visiting the site!