I lurved this New York Times Op-Ed piece last week about all the kinds of street lamps in NYC. Favorite takeaway is about the older-looking lamp at top, the type “1BC Bishops Crook” (drawn by Matteo Pericoli). Coincidentally, this particular streetlight is located one block from where I grew up. In the piece, Kevin Walsh explains the little horizontal stems at the top. 

The Bishops Crook was one of the first modern lamppost designs, going up around 1900. The 1BC electrified posts, installed in the 1910s, paid subtle homage to the gas lamps that preceded them: they were designed with ladder rests, of the kind lamplighters would use on their morning and evening rounds. This charming ornamentation disappeared in later models. Only a handful remain, all in Lower Manhattan. 

The Best and The Brightest, 7/9/10 NY Times

Notes

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2. skepticalorangutan reblogged this from obsoletethebook and added:

   I remember lurking around a website once dedicated to all these weird things around New York - relics of old subway...

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