In 1965, New York City blitzed 5th Avenue in Manhattan, eradicating its famed cast iron twin lamp lampposts, the oldest of whom had stood since before the turn of the century. The replacements were specially bronze anodized versions of the outlandish, other-worldly aluminum shafted lampposts designed exclusively for New York City in 1959 by famed industrial designer Donald Deskey. These poles featured a unique ovular rounded shaft marked by 2 fluted conduits on each side, and typically a davit style mast arm that was fastened into one of the conduits, or both in the case of typical twin lamp versions.
Now by 1965, thousands of Deskey poles had already gone up throughout the city, everywhere from obscure outer borough side streets to arterial expressways and parkways. Toney, upscale and decidedly special, in its own mind anyway, 5th Avenue couldn't be bedecked by any old run of the mill pedestrian street furniture. 5th Avenue had to have its own special design. What it settled for was the compromise bronzed edition Deskey pole, fitted with special brackets that permitted twin mast arms to extend outward like horns. Thus, 5th Avenue kept its traditional twin lamp configuration, except that now both lamps extended out over the roadway instead of one hanging over the sidewalk.
The other 2 brackets held accessories such as fire alarm beacons and flags. As the years went by and the odd bronzed Deskey fell, the city chose not to order new bronze anodized poles to replace them. The city's financial woes in the 1970s had sapped its resolve to preserve certain superfluous perks to which certain privileged thoroughfares had gotten used to. 5th Avenue now had to make do with standard Deskey poles without any color or special bracketing. Instead, as a halfhearted compromise, the city would install roadkill replacements sideways, and insert twin sideways-curved mast arms into the standard fluted Deskey pole slots. And that brings us to this page, after one of these 2nd generation 5th Avenue Deskey replacements itself met a grim demise in 1982, at the corner of 5th and 42nd Street, across from the main New York Library branch.

The curves on the newer 5th Avenue Deskeys were wider than the 1965 models. I suppose if I had to pin a nickname on them, as I'm usually wont to do, other than the catchall name Bigloops that I applied to the standard Deskey poles, I'd have to call them Longhorns. So be it. I'll call the bronze edition Shorthorns and the latter version Longhorns. Now don't think me perverted, but study the outline of the masts, juxtaposition-ed against the pole shaft in the second photo. Doesn't it kind of look shaped like someone's butt? Lord help me, I just couldn't let this one slide by. I've long seen expressions in the sunlit visages of luminaire diffuser bowls, but I never saw this pattern in a laid out lamppost until selecting the photos for this page. Cynics can also see something entirely different if they try just a little bit. The pole looks like a poor soul who either fell or was knocked down, and is reaching up desperately for someone to help it.

I thought at the time of making off with the fallen luminaires, despite their busted up condition. At least one, possibly both, were Thomas Betts model 325, a sodium vapor cobra head which took over the city by storm in the mid 1970s. It waged a war to the death with the previously dominant GE M400A, until both were cut out of the action by smaller, presumably more energy efficient models were brought into the city by the end of the 1970s. As I've noted elsewhere, heavy indeed is the crown worn at any given time by the dominant street light model of the day in New York City.

Part of one of the ruined light fixtures was trying to avoid the trash heap by hiding under a mailbox.

The upside down T visible on top of one of the fixtures stood for Thomas Betts, not "Totaled". As you can see, there was not exactly uniformity in the photo cell switches installed on each luminaire. These switches determined when each fixture kicked on at dusk. It ended up being quite a few weeks before a new lamppost replaced this one. During the interim, just a temporary traffic light held the fort.