Introducing Plaza ACME's new Focus: The Streetlights of Philadelphia

Can you believe it's been 9 years since I started photographing retail?! Me neither. In that time, I've photographed just about every supermarket within reasonable driving distance of me, and now feel it's time to move onto something fresh. When I started this hobby, there weren't many people out photographing this stuff. Now it has grown considerably and I feel I am leaving the community in good hands as I venture out into a new, seldom though about subject: streetlights. More specifically, those of the City of Philadelphia. Let's have a preview of what's to come, shall we?

Starting off with a very early version of Philly's standard pole streetlight (we'll be seeing the more modern equivalents shortly), these were added along MLK drive in the late 80's.

Along one of the ramps connecting MLK to a larger road, they recently upgraded to LED fixtures. Here, the 80's lights had yet to be taken down.

The older lights had fiberglass poles driven straight into the ground, while the new ones are set on concrete foundations.

Here is the more modern version of those lights, they installed these basically everywhere in the city from the 90's up until up until they started using LED's in 2016.

In some cases, the new lights go on electric poles instead of their own. Here, we have an older light on a modern bracket.

These aluminum poles were used by the city for decades before the brown poles came around. This one's got a newer light on it...

...but across the street one still has the original style of light. These would have been greenish-tinted mercury vapor lights originally, but in the 90's the city rewired all the lights for the more efficient orangey sodium vapor.

This is the Center City District style of light. They started using these in the early 2000's in an effort to make Center City a little nicer, but are now used basically throughout the entire city.

A lot of smaller one-way side streets use fixtures like this.

Newer ones are brown. For some reason, they still use these even though the Center City lights would do the same thing and look a lot nicer.

Another variety of old light.

For a while, the city used these slightly different than normal lights on bridges, but more recently started just using the same brown poles they use everywhere else.

New power pole LED fixture. This is the kind of light they currently use.

Some classic aluminum pole lights near the Art Museum.

Older bridge spotlights. These were installed in 1999 to make the bridges over the Schuylkill look nicer at night. Over the past couple years, almost all of these have been switched to LED.

Fairmount Park's lighting. Usually these only have one head.

LED light with an older spotlight attached to it.

Lights like these were installed along the Ben Franklin Parkway and along East Market Street in the early 2000's. They are almost exact replicas of Philly's 1920's streetlights.

In some more crowded intersections, floodlights like these are used. I haven't seen an LED equivalent of these yet, but I'm sure the Streets Department has them picked out.

Power lines sometimes run through narrow paths between the backs of rowhome blocks. In those alleys, they use this kind of light. This one's an LED.

North Broad Street has 2-headed lights. These were installed in the 2000's, replacing an older variety of brown pole lights.

Double-headed Center City lights on North Broad. The only other place you see these is on East Market St.

Before committing to LED lights, the city experimented with a few different kinds. This one looked interesting, but I can see why they didn't stick with them.

This is what I believe to be the oldest kind of decorative streetlight in the city. They have been in use since the early 60's in the Old City neighborhood. They're modeled off of 1700's lighting to better match the colonial buildings in the neighborhood.

A 90's streetlight on an aluminum pole. This style of light, while far less popular than the usual brown pole light, still got used occasionally up through the late 2000's.

South Broad Street got these vintage-style light poles in 1995. Last year, a couple blocks near City Hall got switched to LED like this one, partially because so many of the original ones got broken during the post-Super Bowl riot.

A few blocks down from that, here's the sodium vapor kind.

Older style of light on a short arm.

These poles in front of City Hall were also installed in 1995, but they are exact replicas of the ones that stood here in the 1920's.

Sodium vapor Old City light at night.

The LED version at night

Sodium vapor Center City light at night

Sodium Vapor South Broad  light at night.

LED on South Broad at night.

I believe this Center City light is metal halide (similar to mercury vapor but with less of a greenish tint). The non-LED Center City lights are about a 50-50 split between sodium and halide, but as halides break they are getting replaced with sodiums.

This kind of light is only really seen on UPenn's campus. While it is on a major road, I believe Penn put these up.

The redevelopment of the old Convention Center site involves putting up a bunch of the modern style lights, but gray instead of brown.

A few older ones on the site still are hanging around.

The city doesn't keep the gray ones in stock (this 4-block area and Main Street in the Manayunk neighborhood are the only areas that use them), so they've been going brown as they break and get replaced.

2-headed older pole where only one side has been upgraded.

A classic!

Here's another experimental LED put up before the city officially started using them.

Older alleyway light.

Larger roads that get a lot of industrial use (Columbus, Lindbergh, and American Street for example) used these much higher lights. I'd assume they're supposed to have more powerful fixtures on them, but this one has been replaced with a normal light.

You caught me! These aren't actually in Philly, they're just outside in Wynnewood. I figured these classic 50's lights were worth including.

I haven't seen these on so I can't say, but they're probably either incandescent or mercury.

A slightly different version of the Fairmount Park light used along the Schuylkill Trail.

These were among the first LED's tried out in the city. A handful of lights along Kelly Drive were changed out to 2 different kinds of LED in 2012. This one pictured is the more basic of the two, it's the same kind you see in most older Wawa parking lots.

This one had a flatter, sleeker design and was painted to match the brown poles.

From the 70's through the early 90's, this style of light was used along most of the city's major roads. Almost all of them have been replaced with the standard brown pole lights at this point. They're only left at 4 intersections on Market Street in Old City, the 15th Street ramps on the Vine Street Expressway, and on a couple pedestrian walkways. The walkway ones, like this one, are still mercury vapor, hence the greenish glow.

These lights were put up along edge of the Schuylkill River when the trail was extended into Center City, presumably to keep people from falling in at night. The river's banks are concrete retaining walls, so falling in would be a bit more of a problem here than in the fiver outside the city.

These next four LED lights were put up along North 3rd St in 2011. Each block between Brown and Cambridge got a different type. This was well before Streets officially made the switch in 2016, so I'm guessing this was just to test each kind out.

All of the lights were very different from each other, there were some unusual shapes.

And some of the lights looked a lot more primitive than others. LED was still a very new technology back then; 2010 was the first time I'd ever seen one.

This one is probably the most similar to the kind the City uses today, but there are still a few major differences.

 Below 30th Street, there's Lower 30th. It's been more or less neglected ever since the new street was built above. Basically the entire city between the Schuylkill and 31st Street is on stilts to make room for the highway and train lines beneath. Everything was moved up in the 30's when 30th St Station was built. here, while there is a newer light, the external ballast box from the light that was probably put up around 1950 is still there.

 Further down the road, there's a few mercury vapor lights, which I believe are the last roadway ones in the city. They were supposed to be replaces years ago by newer, more powerful lights on the wall. The new lights were installed, but these were never disconnected, mercury bulbs last a long time, so there were a few of these that hadn't burned out yet after all this time.

Here's one of the less fortunate ones.I'm guessing these were installed sometime in the 70's.

For those of you who actually read this far, first I really respect and appreciate that you did, but APRIL FOOLS!!! I've still got plenty of stores to photograph. Expect something to make up for this tomorrow. In the meantime, here's some Smokey Robinson.

Side note: While this was written ironically, the information contained is true to the best of my knowledge. I interned with the Streets Department last Summer and picked up a lot of information there.