Lampposts From A to G
Paleontologists say that the legions of birds twittering in the trees, paddling in streams and migrating worldwide in the air are directly descended from the dinosaur line and are all that remains of the group of animals that brought the planet the Tyrannosaurus Rex, Brachiosaurus and Triceratops many millions of years ago.
An analogy can be drawn to one variety of NYC lamppost that has persevered for nearly a century; and will likely continue for decades to come. It’s the mid-sized park post, technically Type B, that first appeared between 1910-1912 and has been standard issue ever since in NYC parks. It’s one of a group of classic NYC lampposts given letter designations. While thousands of Type Bs are still to be found, other letter posts have survived by just the dozens. I’ll deal with Type B first, as it’s the most frequent of the remaining lettered posts; thousands can be found in NYC parks.
The Type B has a Beaux Arts pedigree. It was designed, as noted, somewhere in the 1910-1912 period expressly for New York City parks by architect Henry Bacon (1866-1924). Bacon began as a draftsman and quickly gained employment in what was one of the largest architectural firms at the turn of the 20th century, McKim, Mead and White. He went on to design the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, the Danforth Memorial Library in Paterson, NJ, the Union Square Savings Bank in Manhattan, and many of the Wesleyan University campus buildings in Middletown, CT. The Special Collections and Archives department of Olin Library at Wesleyan is the repository of Bacon’s collection of books and papers.
For over 115 years the Type B has been the workhorse of the NYC Parks Department (and its predecessors) for park pathway lighting. It can also be used for street lighting—most notably it turns up on W. 46th St. between 8th and 9th Aves. and Main St. in Port Washington in Nassau County. In the 1990s, new luminaires (the Central Park and the Battery Park) produced by the Sentry Electric Co. appeared; they’re handsome lamps and a perfect complement to the post.
I’m not sure whether they preceded or succeeded Type B, but both bear that classic Bacon design. The Type A shaft is taller by a few feet than the Type B. It’s found frequently around town, especially in parks, but never caught on as much as the Type B.
The Type C is the odd duck among the “letter” lampposts—while the shaft is much the same as A and B, its base is different: I’m not sure it’s a Bacon design. The post pops up on infrequent occasions around town. I spotted a pair in High Bridge Park at Laurel Hill Terrace and W. 187th Street in the Fort George area near Yeshiva University, and a pair at India House facing Hanover Square downtown and a couple of lawns on Rugby Rd. near Cortelyou Rd. in Beverly Square, Brooklyn.
There are no extant survivors of the Type D, and that’s a shame. The Type D was bizarre, with the 11-foot height of the Type B park post, but a lengthy mastarm with a scroll reminiscent of the Corvington longarm post still in use on wide streets, which had several variants of its own. The odd design gave it few opportunities to shine, and while it served some terms in parks perched on walls where it couldn’t be waylaid by truck traffic, it was apparently quickly phased out there.
We’ve returned to a more Henry Bacon-ish profile with the Type E post, which first began appearing in NYC streets in 1913 and continued to be installed into the 1940s. It’s about 13.5 feet high, about the same size as the Type A, but the difference is that the fluted shaft ends about halfway up the post and continues as a plain pipe to the apex. The two sections are separated by ornamentation echoing that at the top of the base.
There are a few dozen Type E’s scattered around the city, including a dozen in Stuyvesant Square Park on 2nd Ave. between E. 15th and 17th Sts. There are three in Cadman Plaza in downtown Brooklyn, five in Fort Greene Park, 25 in Silver Lake Park and 41 in Clove Lake Park, Staten Island, the step street at W. 161st St. and Sedgwick Ave., High Bridge; one in Hero Park, Staten Island (on Victory Blvd. near Silver Lake Park), and one in Kelly Playground, Eastern Parkway Extension and Fulton St. in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The 12 at Mullaly Park in the Bronx have likely been wiped out by construction of the new Yankee Stadium. My favorite Type E is the lone specimen I found on the underside of the Long Island Expressway on a walkway taking 21st St. over the Long Island Rail Road cut in Hunter’s Point, Queens.
The Type F is the passenger pigeon of NYC lampposts—once they were ubiquitous on city side streets and some avenues, but starting in the 1950s there was a persistent program to slay them, and most original Type Fs have vanished. But a revival has begun. According to The New York Times’ late great Christopher Gray, they were reportedly designed in the 1910s by Charles F. Lacombe, at the time the city’s chief engineer for light and power (he has an avenue in Soundview, the Bronx, named for him).
Type F had many variants—there was the 11-foot tall model, which held down the Manhattan side street franchise for decades, and the F3 (above right) which was a foot taller and did duty on avenues, including 7th. There was also a hybrid Type EF, a Type E with the F-style reverse scroll mastarm welded at the top. There were also a number of knockoffs that appeared on step streets and pedestrian bridges; all of those have vanished.
The twin Type F pictured here stood on the campus of SUNY Maritime College in the Bronx was one of two I located in the city, the other at the east end of E. 58th St. near Sutton Pl. Both are one. Today, you can count the number of decades-old Type Fs remaining on one hand. But: the city has installed new versions of the Type F around town, most notably in Manhattan on E. and W. 8th St.
The Type G, 20 feet in height, and its successor, Type G3, 22′, were at home in public parks, side streets and some important roads. In many ways they resembled the more massive Type 24M Corvingtons, though they had different metal scrollwork and the bases were of the Henry Baconesque style that Types A, B, D, E and F all used.
There are still a number of Type G’s left, but their main bastion nowadays—almost 40—is in Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village on the far east side. They’ve gone through a number of luminaires—from the 1970s through the late-1990s, they employed the late, unlamented Unidor 400 sodium fixtures that appeared en masse beginning in 1972. In the early-2000s the Stuy Town G’s were given a black paint job and treated to new pendant lamps.
Until 1999 or so, you could find four of them on the Dyker Park Golf Course service road and parking lot. They’d long since stopped working. A couple survived on the SUNY Maritime campus at Fort Schuyler till just recently. Around 1988, I found an extremely rusted one at Mosholu Ave. and Post Rd/ in Riverdale (shown above), but that one was removed around 1999 or 2000. As late as the early-1970s there was a survivor on 78th St. near the 7th Ave. Gowanus Expressway service road, but the DOT ferreted it out and felled it.
—Kevin Walsh is the webmaster of the award-winning website Forgotten NY, and the author of the books Forgotten New York (HarperCollins, 2006) and also, with the Greater Astoria Historical Society, Forgotten Queens (Arcadia, 2013)