Heights' Lights
Brooklyn Heights has launched a $2.7 million campaign to replace its current, modern streetlights with antique-looking lampposts, the Brooklyn Paper reports. The Brooklyn Heights Association has already received $250,000 in public funds for phase one of the project, and will soon receive $400,000 more. The 229 posts to be replaced are aluminum, “cobra-head” style lights,…
Brooklyn Heights has launched a $2.7 million campaign to replace its current, modern streetlights with antique-looking lampposts, the Brooklyn Paper reports. The Brooklyn Heights Association has already received $250,000 in public funds for phase one of the project, and will soon receive $400,000 more. The 229 posts to be replaced are aluminum, “cobra-head” style lights, and they will be replaced with replicas of the old bishops-crook style lamps that used to line the streets before the 1960s. Each bishop’s crook light costs around $10,000, the Paper reports, while the cobra’s head lights cost $4,000 each. They are beautiful, they enhance the neighborhood, and they are consistent with the history of the Heights, said BHA President Judy Stanton. The bishop’s crook lights already line Montague Street, and the project does not have a set start date.
Light Pork in Brooklyn Heights [Brooklyn Paper]
Brooklyn Heights Becoming Bishop’s Crooksville [Brooklyn Eagle]
Putnam: For someone like yourself who used to live in a brownstone, I find it laughable that you made the comment you did.
Jefrey: Please explain how a replica of an old lamp post dilutes history? And tell me what, exactly, is gained by some ultramodern design?
Cool Ringo – maybe I’ll try calling 311 rather than walking by them and cursing Mayor Bloomberg – which doesn’t seem to be rectifying the problem.
sorry- I meant that to read- but if you have to replace missing ones, I am more pragmatic.
jefrey- first of all, where do you find the originals and they would be far more expensive than repros. Then most of them would need a lot of work and refinishing. I am all for keeping the originals, but replacing them? I am more pragmatic.
That said, I also wonder why so much money is spent in BH when so many other places go wanting. Sorry Minard but your tax dollars comment is disingenuous. I don’t see my tax dollars getting returned at the same rate to my neighborhood and we’re a historic district too.
If they were original, they’d be gas, not electric.
From my perspective, reproductions don’t give residents a sense of history – they dilute it.
they should put back all the SRO’s….that was vintage Brooklyn Heights
> I too tire of our worship of all that is nineteenth century.
So you are opposed to the proposed plan to decorate the streets of Brownstone Brooklyn with artfully placed horse poop?
hipster, I waited and wondered for months about the dark streetlamp outside my window. then I had to novel idea to call 311 about it and THAT SAME NIGHT a cherry picker pulled up, a guy went up, and light was restored. I couldn’t believe it.