That I even know their identity is owed
to the precious data sent to me by site contributor Sanders Saltzman,
also a Queens resident although not related to me. Sanders supplied
me with a copy of a Unidor catalog. They were manufactured by
McGraw Edison and were boosted as being a snap to maintain, due
to their detachable power deck. Their design was touted as "simple"
and their expression certainly made them look simple. The 400
shown here uses, of course, 400w lamps. A smaller brother model,
the 250, used 100-250w lamps, but I never saw them used here.
I suspect most of the 400s use the same refractor bowl as do
the TB327s. In any event, the Unidor's spec sheet says it could
be supplied with either a prismatic borosilicate glass, or polycarbonate
bowl.
Today, the Unidor 400 is definitely an endangered species here. |
Shot
June 1998, at corner of Baychester Blvd and Bartow Ave, in the
heart of Co-op City in the northeast Bronx. It is very rare these
days to see two of these early 70's Unidor 400s together on the
same twinmast. These are truly classic lumes, pioneers of NYC's
HPS era. I first noticed them in Sunnyside, Queens, along Queens
Blvd, sometime around 1971/72. The city had not yet taken on
the Thomas Betts TB-327. The Unidors had the stupidest visage
of any luminaire I've ever seen. They looked like Blockheads
and that is what I called them. The constipated look of the 327's
, which stole the ball from them as the premier HPS fixture in
the mid 70's, is a distant second in the stupid-look race.