Many new street lighting models invaded New York City in the post war years, but it is doubtful any provided the stunning visual impact that the formidable looking Westinghouse Whiteways did. The Whiteway light fixtures housed several long fluorescent tubes, like kitchen light fixtures on science fiction grade steroids.
The Whiteways were put up on 3rd Avenue in Manhattan following the tear down of the famed 3rd Avenue El elevated subway line. They also were installed on 9th Avenue, which had its own elevated line ripped down years earlier. Thus, only having just emerged from the dark, dank, sooty, grimy and forbidding shadows of the aging elevated lines, both avenues were now bathed in luxurious, state of the art white fluorescent illumination. The contrast had to be astounding to long term residents and workers.

As part of the winding southern extension of the 3rd Avenue north-south route, Park Row, by the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge also received Whiteways, as did the Bowery, which Park Row flowed into going north, and which ultimately fed into 3rd Avenue. Much of the plaza leading up to the Brooklyn Bridge was also fitted with Whiteways, such as these. The rest of the bridge ramps were staffed by Whitestone style poles dating from the 1940s.

By 1982, however, when these photos were taken with my not so trusty 110 camera, the now aged and outmoded Westinghouse Whiteways were on death row. Virtually all of them had been eliminated further north. The Park Row Brooklyn Bridge Plaza was pretty much their last refuge at that point, in New York City anyway. The Whiteways were never city exclusives, as some other lighting models were. Among the other venues where Whiteways continued to thrive at that point was Bergenline Avenue in Union City, New Jersey. New York City though had long before committed itself to swapping all its mercury vapor lighting for sodium vapor, which despite its sickly orange cast, spread its light over far greater distances and thus was employed to help cut down night time crime.
In this view, the remaining Whiteway twin lamp poles on Park Row were forced to share what little space was left to them with the Deskey "Bigloop" and "Kojak Quarterloop" standards that relentlessly stole their livelihood. Note the wires swung from one Whiteway to another. I believe those were stopgap jury rigged fixes for broken underground cabling between the poles.

Lest anyone feel sorry for the doomed Westinghouse Whiteways, I must digress and bring into focus what should really be the object of such sentiment. I had taken few photos over the years of the World Trade Center, probably because I always figured it wasn't going anywhere, and there was always tomorrow. Well, one day tomorrow disappeared forever. While rescanning my Whiteway photos, I came upon this, a photo of the Twin Towers I hadn't realized I had. It was taken from the same spot by Park Row, looking west.