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'THE EVOLUTION OF THE NYC TRAFFIC SIGNAL'
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Mr. Linsky
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 26, 2014 5:33 pm    Post subject: 'THE EVOLUTION OF THE NYC TRAFFIC SIGNAL' Reply with quote

The evolution of the traffic signal light in New York City is about as interesting and 'bizarre' as it gets considering the fact that I don't believe it was ever duplicated anywhere else! - 'even' early Los Angeles attempts with their system of a combination of lights and mechanical semaphores were at least nearer to the ground for easy viewing.

When I first saw pictures of New York's versions I thought that they must have been meant for low flying aircraft or, at nearly thirty feet in height, a deterrent to theft of the fixtures!

The first known and very fancy version of these towers appeared on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue at 42nd. Street as seen in the top photo taken in October of 1923.

It required a traffic officer to climb a ladder to the control booth at the top and to operate the signals by hand as the age of automation had yet to arrive.

Interestingly, there were three lenses in each direction which meant that an amber warning light was included unlike the city's automatic signals that followed in the thirties and used a momentary green/red for the same purpose.

The second photo taken in May of 1924 on Bedford at Parkside in Brooklyn is a 'generic' version of the Fifth Avenue model clearly showing the ladder to the hatch under the booth.

With the advent of electrical timers in the early thirties the booths were done away with but the fixtures were still far out of sight for a nearby motorist to view them comfortably as seen in the third shot below also taken in Brooklyn.

Of course, when federal mandates required the modern three lens signals in the sixties New York conformed and slowly updated their system which was reputed to be among the largest in the world.

All photos courtesy of the New York City Department of Plant and Structures.

Mr. Linsky - Green Bus Lines, Inc., Jamaica, New York





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NEW YORK OMNIBUS 2629
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 27, 2014 11:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mr."L":

Newark, New Jersey's largest city, once had a traffic tower similiar to the one located at 42nd & 5th, this one at the intersection of Broad and Market streets.

Note that the streetcars clearly overshadowed by a plethora of PS buses in this 1930's photo; the presence of the streetcars dates this view to pre-1938, when the last streetcars passed through downtown Newark on the streets (1937)

A number of years ago, the STAR LEDGER printed a detailed story on this historic tower; to say its "afterlife" was indeed a strange and somber one, is an understatement.

After its retirement as a traffic tower, it was relocated to a New Jersey cemetery; sans signal lights and other related equipment, the windows were covered over, and louvered strips were installed in these panels.

Using the sound equipment of the day, somber recorded music and chimes would play from the tower, whenever a funeral cortege entered the cemetery.

Certainly a world away from the hustle and bustle of downtown Newark, and another of those "strange but true" stories that New Jersey seems to have an endless supply of.....

"NYO"

http://newarkstreets.com/photos/albums/userpics/10001/traffictower04.gif

(courtesy: oldnewark.com)


Last edited by NEW YORK OMNIBUS 2629 on Tue Oct 28, 2014 3:15 pm; edited 6 times in total
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NEW YORK OMNIBUS 2629
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 27, 2014 11:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

More on the Newark traffic tower:

http://www.oldnewark.com/memories/downtown/bodian4corners.htm
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NEW YORK OMNIBUS 2629
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 27, 2014 11:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

This bustling view of the Newark traffic tower dates to the 1920's; as you can see, the tower witnessed the comings and goings of countless streetcars and buses, in the course of an average day.....

http://newarkstreets.com/photos/albums/userpics/10001/traffictower02.jpg

(courtesy of oldnewark.com)
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N4 Jamaica




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Location: Long Island

PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2014 6:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Many thanks to Mr. Linsky for introducing this fascinating topic and to NYO for showing the tower in Newark.
---
Stuff That Nobody Cares About has an article about the designer of the Fifth Avenue towers and some problems with color aspects.
Link:
http://stuffnobodycaresabout.com/2012/06/27/old-new-york-in-photos-19/

forgotten-ny.com should be a good source for later traffic signals, but I can't seem to find the right page.

Thanks!
Joe
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NEW YORK OMNIBUS 2629
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2014 8:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

All:

There is certainly no shortage of FACC buses in this "jam packed" 1920's view of 5th & 42nd; showing the traffic tower (there is also a bit of info on the tower itself here, too)

Obviously, "gridlock" is nothing new........

http://www.timeshutter.com/image/5th-ave-traffic-showing-signal-tower-new-york

(courtesy: Time Shutter)
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ripta42
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2014 10:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

1999 New York Times interview with the owner of the Newark tower.
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NEW YORK OMNIBUS 2629
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2014 11:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

"A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE TRAFFIC LIGHT" (there is also a beautiful close up view of the 5th Avenue tower on this page).......

http://theoldmotor.com/?p=78698

(courtesy: The Old Motor)
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NEW YORK OMNIBUS 2629
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2014 11:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Next to last photo on this page shows the original traffic tower at 42nd & 5th in 1920 (certainly, this was a "no frills" structure!)

Though no FACC buses are visible, a TARS streetcar on the 42nd Street crosstown line is on hand......

http://www.policeny.com/ptlmofpatrol2.html


Last edited by NEW YORK OMNIBUS 2629 on Tue Oct 28, 2014 2:02 pm; edited 1 time in total
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NEW YORK OMNIBUS 2629
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2014 1:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The 5th Avenue traffic tower at 42nd can just be glimpsed (a bit blurry) in the background in this bustling 1920's scene (no wonder some sort of modern traffic control was needed!)

In this scene, almost all the traffic consists of only FACC buses, exemplefying the heyday of open-topped double deckers on 5th Avenue.......

http://citynoise.org/upload/38055.jpg


Last edited by NEW YORK OMNIBUS 2629 on Tue Oct 28, 2014 2:55 pm; edited 2 times in total
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NEW YORK OMNIBUS 2629
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2014 2:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

ripta42 wrote:
1999 New York Times interview with the owner of the Newark tower.


Thank you!

This is similiar to the one that I read in the STAR LEDGER ages ago; another classic example of one of those timeless "only in New Jersey" stories!

"NYO"
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Mr. Linsky
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2014 3:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A little more on the subject written by Christopher Gray for the New York Times.

Tired of cars — and bikes — running red lights? How about no lights at all? That’s the kind of traffic system New York had until 1920, when a series of tall bare-bones towers went up down the middle of Fifth Avenue, flashing red and green lights to the growing onslaught of automobiles. Two years later they were replaced with formidably elegant bronze and granite towers, sumptuous contributions to the City Beautiful, but destroyed within a decade, victims of increasing traffic.

The Library of Congress has a website of digitized photographs and early movies of New York, called American Memory. If you look at the half dozen movies set in New York it is clear that, except for a few policemen, traffic regulation amounted to “hey, watch out!”

My book “Fifth Avenue, 1911, From Start to Finish” (Dover, 1994) covers most blocks from Washington Square to 93rd Street, and there is nary a traffic light nor a sign to be seen in any of the photographs, although policemen were clearly on duty at many intersections.

But automobiles complicated the mix, and safety became an increasing concern. In 1913 The New York Times reported on the city’s “Death Harvest” — that’s the actual headline — from 1910 and 1912 for three different types of vehicles: the number killed by wagons and carriages, down in two years to 177 from 211; and streetcars, down to 134 from 148. But automobile fatalities nearly doubled, to 221 from 112. Ninety-five percent of the dead, according to The Times, were pedestrians. (In 2013, 156 pedestrians were killed by automobiles.)

Influential retailers on Fifth Avenue no doubt felt sympathy, but what hurt them at the cash register was traffic gridlock, and pressure grew to declog the avenue. It could take 40 minutes to go from 57th to 34th Street.

There had been an experimental traffic light in 1917, but it was short-lived. Thus it was in 1920 that the first permanent traffic lights in New York went up, the gift of Dr. John A. Harriss, a millionaire physician fascinated by street conditions. His design was a homely wooden shed on a latticework of steel, from which a police officer changed signals, allowing one to two minutes for each direction. Although the meanings we attach to red and green now seem like the natural order of things, in 1920 green meant Fifth Avenue traffic was to stop so crosstown traffic could proceed; white meant go. Most crosstown streets and Fifth Avenue were still two-way.

The doctor’s signals were so well received that in 1922 the Fifth Avenue Association gave the city, at a cost of $126,000, a new set of signals, seven ornate bronze 23-foot-high towers placed at intersections along Fifth from 14th to 57th Streets. Designed by Joseph H. Freedlander, they were the most elegant street furniture the city has ever had. It was a time when elevating public taste through civic beauty was considered a fit goal for government effort. In 1923 the magazine Architecture opined that “To understand the beautiful is to create a love for the beautiful, to widen the boundaries of human pride, enjoyment and accomplishment.”

Dr. Harriss’s towers would have looked at home in a railway freight yard; Freedlander’s towers were fitting adornments for the noblest of New York’s public spaces, like the forecourt of the New York Public Library or the Plaza at 59th Street.

For reasons unstated, the towers were not placed in the center of the intersections, but several feet north or south of the crosswalks — crosstown drivers could barely see them. The new lights supposedly reduced that trip from 57th to 34th to 15 minutes. Soon, traffic lights were like laptops in classrooms: everyone was in favor of them.

Most of the big avenues got traffic lights, of much simpler design, and mounted on corners. In 1927 the present system of red, yellow and green was generally recognized, but The Times said the yellow caution light had been abandoned in New York because it was a “temptation to motorists to rush through intersections.”

Cars continued to flood the streets and within a few years the police decided that Freedlander’s sumptuous traffic towers were blocking the roadway. It took some convincing, but the Fifth Avenue Association came around to taking them down and in 1929 Freedlander was called back to design a new two-light traffic signal, also bronze, to be placed on the corners. These were topped by statues of Mercury and lasted until 1964. A few of the Mercury statues have survived, but Freedlander’s 1922 towers have completely vanished.

In retrospect, the automobile appears as the opening wedge to a new kind of city. Pedestrians were zoned off the streets, to which they had formerly had unfettered access. The speed of automobiles, not horse-drawn vehicles, became the metric. Street cars, held hostage to their fixed routes, were often stalled by traffic. The streets themselves became layered with regulation after regulation, covered with signs, lights, arrows and stanchions, none of which were ever as elegant as the 1922 Fifth Avenue traffic towers.

Mr. Linsky - Green Bus Lines, Inc., Jamaica, New York


Traffic signals were not always utilitarian. Center, 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue today. Left, a bronze traffic signal tower designed by Joseph H. Freedlander at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, 1922. Right, the first generation, a box-type traffic tower at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, 1920. Credit From left: Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times; Underwood & Underwood; Office for Metropolitan History
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NEW YORK OMNIBUS 2629
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2014 3:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mr. "L"/All:

As an unbashed buff of vintage traffic signals, I find this topic more than fascinating; certainly, there is always something new to be learned (I'm sure many folks have not the slightest idea that a 5th Avenue-style tower once kept traffic in check at Broad and Market in Newark!)

This page, on historic traffic signals/lights provides a fascinating wealth of rare photos and info; there is not only a photo of the bronze 5th Avenue tower here, but also, a less-elaborate tower that was built by the Yellow Cab Company of Chicago......

"NYO"

http://signalfan.freeservers.com/history.html

(courtesy: SignalFan.com)


Last edited by NEW YORK OMNIBUS 2629 on Tue Oct 28, 2014 3:53 pm; edited 1 time in total
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NEW YORK OMNIBUS 2629
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2014 3:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A 1920's view of the 5th Avenue & 42nd St. tower; a FACC bus can just be glimpsed in the background.....

http://signalfan.freeservers.com/historical/nytower.htm

(courtesy: SignalFan.com)
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NEW YORK OMNIBUS 2629
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PostPosted: Tue Oct 28, 2014 4:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Earlier, Mr. "L" made brief mention of the early traffic signals in LA, which used both colored lights and semaphore arms.

These charming signals were also often depicted in many old movies and theatrical cartoons, back in the day.

This 1940's view is quite nostalgic, showing a PE Yellow Coach loading passengers in the company of a vintage "semaphore" signal......

http://www.newdavesrailpix.com/pe/htm/pe546.htm

(courtesy newdavesrailpix0
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