# Street lights in the 1950s **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 9, 2008, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/street-lights-in-the-1950s/476470 "2008-12-09T23:49:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ntcrawler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/34f0e0/32.png) [@ntcrawler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ntcrawler)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/street-lights-in-the-1950s/476470/1 "2008-12-09T23:49:13Z")
I took a walk through an older neighborhood in my area and while basking under the light of the salmon high pressure sodium lanterns it got me thinking: What type of street lighting would have been in common use in the 1950’s in a typical uptown area of say Chicago or Los Angeles as far as technology, design of the lanterns, etc? ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/street-lights-in-the-1950s/476470/2 "2008-12-10T00:11:25Z")
Incandescents, or maybe those new-fangled mercury vapor jobs. Flourescents were around but never became very common in street lighting. The wiki article on the history of street lights dates mercury vapor lamps to 1948 in commercial use: > **[History of street lighting in the United States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_street_lighting_in_the_United_States)** > > The history of street lighting in the United States is closely linked to the urbanization of America. Artificial illumination has stimulated commercial activity at night, and has been tied to the country's economic development, including major innovations in transportation, particularly the growth in automobile use. In the two and a half centuries before LED lighting emerged as the new "gold standard", cities and towns across America relied on oil, coal gas, carbon arc, incandescent, and hi The... ---
**Author:** ![ntcrawler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/34f0e0/32.png) [@ntcrawler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ntcrawler)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/street-lights-in-the-1950s/476470/3 "2008-12-10T00:15:23Z")
I thought Flourescents were fairly common in other countries such as Germany? I recall they were fairly ubuquitous in some cities such as Franfurt and Hamburg in the 70s and 80s? ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/street-lights-in-the-1950s/476470/4 "2008-12-10T00:22:39Z")
I think that article is fairly accurate, at least concerning the US, when it says: > [@](#): > > Fluorescent lamps quickly fell out of favor for main street lighting, but remained very popular for parking lot and outside building illumination for roadside establishments. Maybe they were more popular elsewhere, but they would still have the drawbacks listed in the article. ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/street-lights-in-the-1950s/476470/5 "2008-12-10T00:30:37Z")
And at any rate, I wish they would end their flirtation with low pressure sodiums on my main cross street. I HATE those things. ---
**Author:** ![ntcrawler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/34f0e0/32.png) [@ntcrawler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ntcrawler)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/street-lights-in-the-1950s/476470/6 "2008-12-10T00:32:50Z")
> [@yabob](#): > > And at any rate, I wish they would end their flirtation with low pressure sodiums on my main cross street. I HATE those things. They seem to be ubiquitous at underpasses and underneath bridges in the Chicago area. Even for new construction. I hate that eerie piss-yellow glow too. What gives? ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/street-lights-in-the-1950s/476470/7 "2008-12-10T03:47:10Z")
> [@yabob](#): > > [History of street lighting in the United States - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_street_lighting_in_the_United_States) The Wikipedia is amazing. ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/street-lights-in-the-1950s/476470/8 "2008-12-10T21:40:55Z")
There’s a 1951 picture of Michigan Ave. in Chicago here. > **[Picturing the Century : Post War America](https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/picturing_the_century/galleries/postwar.html)** > > An exhibition of 20th century photographs from the holdings of the National Archives and Records Administration. On the left is a globe covering an incandescent light. I remember Chicago changing to mercury vapor lights in the late 1950s. That globe light was typical downtown. There were probably some more ornate lights still used. Search for “Chicago Wrigley” here [Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection \>\> Home](http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/cushman/search/index.jsp) for some shots of the same area in 1941. More Chicago history here: [http://encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/](http://encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/) ---
**Author:** ![fiddlesticks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fiddlesticks/32/18129_2.png) [@fiddlesticks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fiddlesticks)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/street-lights-in-the-1950s/476470/9 "2008-12-10T23:10:36Z")
Man I do love the [Cushman Collection](http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/cushman/search/advancedSearch.jsp). Couple of interesting example I found. Pick “Cushman ID Number” in the top dropdown on the linked page and enter 1449.12. Also check out 847.18. Both date to the late 40’s. They show an exposed incandescent fixture with a shield above the bulb to reflect the light downwards. But I note that on a lot of the Chicago neighborhoods, espeically the poorer ones, there doesn’t appear to be much of any street lighting at all. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/street-lights-in-the-1950s/476470/10 "2008-12-10T23:31:36Z")
Mine had giant incandesent lightbulbs. When I was a kid a worker gave me one of the burned out bulbs. Coolness. ---
**Author:** ![racer72](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/racer72/32/3075_2.png) [@racer72](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/racer72)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/street-lights-in-the-1950s/476470/11 "2008-12-11T01:04:12Z")
Back in the mid 70’s, the city of Tacoma replaced all the incandescent street lights (very cool glass globes on precast concrete poles) with ugly green aluminum poles with flourescent lighting in the neighborhood in which my grandmother lived. Within a few months many of the lights quit working, others had ballasts that went wonky and messed up the TV reception for those that lived within a few hundred feed of the offending light fixture. For a few weeks, my grandmother could not watch TV after dark because of a bad light. The problem went away when a neighbor cut the power wire to the light. A few years later the new lights were removed and mercury vapor lights were installed on telephone poles. ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/street-lights-in-the-1950s/476470/12 "2008-12-11T01:23:51Z")
> [@ntcrawler](#): > > They seem to be ubiquitous at underpasses and underneath bridges in the Chicago area. Even for new construction. I hate that eerie piss-yellow glow too. What gives? They are very efficient, so they conserve power, and they have long lives. This means they are cheap to operate. They also help combat light pollution, which was part of the reasoning in the South Bay (San Jose and adjoining communities). Lick Observatory is on Mount Hamilton overlooking the area. I still don’t like them for street lights. I don’t mind them so much in parking lots, although it makes it harder to pick out your car since you can’t tell colors. I used to have a red car which turned a very odd shade of charcoal gray under SOX lights.