Day 41

Fire alarm lights

February 9th, 2012



You can see an older light on a scrolled bracket (the bracket is possibly 100 years old — it would have originally held a streetlight) and a newer one atop the current streetlight.


8 Comments

  1. Dorinda from Mentor, Oh. says:

    Busy intersection.

  2. Vintagejames says:

    The one with the scrolled bracket holds a light which would indicate where a fire alarm was pulled. Now that most of us have mobile phones, etc., many of the fire alarm boxes have been removed, but the lights remain. That bracket never held a streetlight, it is near where there was once a fire alarm box.

    • RAYMOND in ALABAMA says:

      I looked on Google and you are right, by it having the RED GLOBE. Thats the reason everyone in NY slways

      went around looking up. But I would like to have it, to go with rest of the antiques I have accumulated over the years.

    • Sharon says:

      You are right.

    • Matt Green says:

      Check out the Forgotten New York link in the photo description: “The scrolled brackets seen here are quite old–I’ve seen them on photos from the 1910s. They originally were used for standard street lighting and most of them held fanned ‘radial-wave’ reflectors. Sometime in mid-century, they were given the new task of supporting fire alarm lamps that at first were globe-shaped and which, in the Fab Fifties, gradually were replaced by these familiar oblong ones (known officially as 3857 luminaires).”

  3. Lizzie K says:

    that is awesome

  4. Joisy jeff says:

    yes, fire boxes are as rare as pay phones.

    No joke..pulled a old rotary phone out the other day..and my 8 year old says..”daddy how do you write with that”

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