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Street Lights
Retro Lights
Photos by Adam Paul
Retro is always "hip."  Take one look at the fashions and styles seen about town, and you can find some vestige of nearly every decade.  From the baseball jersey designs of the 80's to hair styles that favor the 50's.  And lest us not forget the auto designs that harken back to the 30's.

But Streetlights?  Of course!  Even streetlights have come full circle in a weird ironic way...


When you think about it, the whole concept of reproduction streetlights seems a bit ironic to say the least.  It was not too long ago that the City was doing a wholesale conversion of its "obsolete" streetlights into newer, modern styles.  The bulk of this conversion occurred from 1950 to 1967, when tens of thousands of gas and incandescent lights were scrapped, replaced by the streamlined styles prevalent today.

By the 1980's however, nostalgic sentiments have witnessed a desire among many communities to make their communities look quainter, paricularly regarding street lighting.  The result: a number of replica streetlight designs have surfaced, ranging from boxlights that seem more suited to an English village, to pseudo-Novalux lights that do not burn incandescently.  While none of these lights are precise copies of any original fixtures seen about the area, they do at least provide a good bit of variety to the landscape. Following is a pictorial review of a few the different styles observed.

Charles and Centre - Mount Vernon
Far and away the nicest of the reproduction streetlights I've encountered is a set of eight that grace the ends of the 600 and 700 blocks of North Charles Street.  The cup shaped diffusers are nice touches seen nowhere else in the area.
Ingleside Avenue in Franklintown
With a shape similar to a Novalux, but a clear top, these fixtures on the old Ingleside Avenue Bridge in Franklintown do provide an interesting look.  One admittedly nice touch is the tinted top rim, complete with "F" insets, apparently for the community
Reisiterstown Road in Pikesville
Pikesville has some rather nice reproduction lamps, with simplistic poles fashioned in a blueish verdigris copper color.
Belvedere Square
A little less successful in emulating a Novalux lamp, are these globes, seen in many spots in the city, such as here at Belvedere Square.
Mount Vernon Place
More fancy than most are these frosted lamps in Mount Vernon, with touches such as framing for the lenses, and ornately detailed tops.
Calvert Street Bridge at Mt. Royal
Along the Calvert Street Bridge are these dual head repros sporting the typical version of the antique lumiere reproduction.
Reservoir Hill
Among the nicest reproduction lights spotted so far are these plastic globed fixtures mounted outside two Reservoir Hill apartment towers, carrying a nice level of ornateness in their detail.

I'D BE WILLING TO HEAR OF OTHERS.  EMAIL ME!

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