Photo Gallery: Streetlights
 Shot
April 1998, a handful of parkway woodies still live and work,
in the parking lot of Baysides's Clearivew Park, located at the
confluence of the Throggs Neck Bridge, Cross Island Parkway and
namesake Clearview Expressway.Best of all, the woodies all still sport Westinghouse AK10 cuplights (my pet name for these ubiquitous pendant/teardrop/acorn type luminaires). the cups still work, with incandescent bulbs, although one of them is missing it's refractor bowl. These homey looking, rustic, cedarwood poles were the pole de riguer on all area parkways, as well as adjunct properties alongside the parkways, such as this park. Of the various mastlengths used, these examples are the longest. The limit on mast length inherent in their design is the main reason they've become nearly extinct here. In an effort to move lighting further away from the roadways across Long Island , most of its parkways now have giant, snakelike davit poles, set way back, yet long enough for the masts to reach over the roadway. As for the NYC stretches of parkway, none of which employ davits, the motives for removing the quaint woodies were probably limited to simple economics. Aluminum poles don't need the care and maintainance of a woody. These woodies have little square copper caps atop them, which I believe is meant to prevent the wood post from splitting. The Westinghouse cuplights emerged in the late 40's, eventually replacing most of NYC's myriad gumball type teardrops and mission bells, before the cobrahead invasion in the 60's. |
 One
of the three woodies in the lot is literally backed against the
wall of the Clearview Expressway. Actually, these trussarm poles
are lining the entrance ramp leading into the southbound Clearview,
from Willets Point Blvd. Much of the traffic on this ramp comes
off of the southbound Cross Island Pkwy. These trussarms are
the 1961 originals. They originally had the same cuplights, albeit
mercury, as the woody.Cross Islanders looking to get up on the Throggs Neck, to get to the Bronx and points north, must also go up this ramp and take the Clearview south to 26th Avenue. There, they will cross over to the northbound Clearview to get the bridge. Similarly, northbound Clearviewers looking to detour to the Whitestone Bridge, must get off at Willets Point and wend their way up that street a while. before being able to get on the Whitestone-bound Cross Island. |