Cast Iron Lamppost Archives
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 Two closeups of bishop crook variants. |
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Both have shorter "cane handle" heads than
the most prevalent surviving old bishops, or the new retro-bishops. The shorthead on the left was (and I hope still is) on a side street in the 40's, just off Park Avenue, when I nabbed it in 1982. It still had a castiron bell. Unlike it's fellow shorthead from City Hall Park, with the cuplight on the right, it also wore a little hitching-post necktie, evoking the gaslight era brackets the lamplighters used to steady their ladders against. The pole may even be a carryover that used to hold a gaslight. The City Hall shorthead had additional ornamentation on the crest of it's cane-handle, whereas the midtowner was bald on top. It was shot in 1990. City Hall Park was still filled with ancient bishops at that time. UPDATE 4/99: We are sweating through a current reconstruction going on in City Hall Park. Although the Bishop Crooks have apparently not been disturbed, yet, we pray they are not fitted with the ridiculous cobraheads as shown on the index page. |