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.
Day 41
Fire alarm lights
February 9th, 2012
I'm walking every street in New York City.
This is the counterpoint to my walk across the US. Instead of seeing a million places for just a minute each, I'm going to spend a million minutes exploring just one place. By the time I finish walking every block of every street in all five boroughs, I'll have traveled more than 8,000 miles on foot — all within a single city. Details!
Email me at matt@imjustwalkin.com
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Maps: Progress | Photos
~9,954 miles walked
Your donations allow me to keep walking full-time. If you think what I'm doing is valuable and you'd like to offer some support, I would be very grateful. On the other hand, if you think I'm a worthless bum, feel free to email me and tell me to get a job, bozo. Both are excellent options!
Busy intersection.
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.
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.
You are right.
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).”
that is awesome
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”
About as bad as finding ROOSTER & HEN’S TEETH.