Taking it to the Streets
Walking the sidewalks of New York, it is easy to overlook the things you see every day that are so common and ubiquitous, they just seem to blend into the background. This blog post is a photo essay and field guide to decode the urban ecosystem which we encounter daily. The sidewalks on which we stroll, whether we know it or not, are timelines through layers of history displaying a varied collection of the city’s ever-changing infrastructure.
Sidewalks
99% of the city’s sidewalks are poured concrete. However, in older parts of the city you may find original granite and slate sidewalks. These have survived due to their superior durability, much more so than concrete which cracks and often must be replaced. On some granite sidewalks you can spot the original coal chute openings that fed steam boilers in building cellars. The curious carvings around these openings diverted rainwater.
Belgian Block
Most of the streets in the city are paved with asphalt, but there are still sections of the city that have cobblestone streets, also known as Belgian Block. These are primarily found in Soho, Tribeca, the West Village, and the Meat Packing District. Stone Street in the Financial District is said to be the first street in colonial New York paved with cobblestones, hence the name. Throughout the city you may find other cobblestone streets, and every so often you will spot a section of asphalt that has been worn away to reveal an underlying layer of Belgian Block.
Manhole Covers
Embedded in streets and sidewalks are the ubiquitous and often beautiful reminders of the subterranean world beneath our feet, providing access to an underground network of steam, water, sewer, electric, and communication lines. Thousands of manholes are scattered throughout the city. (Ever wonder why manholes are round? If manholes were square or rectangular, the cover could fall right into the hole since the diagonal length of the hole is wider than any side of the cover.) There are scores of different styles, some ornate and some utilitarian, each with its own markings, identifying a utility or company. These covers are made of cast iron and some date back over a hundred years. Much has been written about them, and they have been the subject of art projects and exhibitions. The older NYC manhole covers were cast in foundries right here in NYC, but more recently, many have been imported from China and India, although some are still cast in US based foundries.
Standpipes
These are the street side portion of a building’s fire protection system. They provide connections for the fire department to pump water into a standpipe or sprinkler system to supplement a building’s water supply. Some of these are Siamese connections, which provide a back-up connection in case one connection is damaged. Notice that these connections are color coded; green for sprinkler, red for standpipe, and yellow for combined sprinkler/ standpipe.
Trash Cans
23,000 trash cans (or litter baskets) occupy city streets, and soon they will all be replaced with a new design that was recently awarded through an international design competition with over 200 entries. While most of the existing cans are the familiar green mesh design, in use since the 1930’s, there are myriad of other designs in use, some of which are promulgated by local Business Improvement Districts (BIDS), and other designs which are employed in parks. In a counter intuitive move, the Sanitation Department is looking to reduce the quantity of trash cans due to chronic misuse — dumping of household and commercial trash when the bins are meant for pedestrian litter only. The tactic is reported to have reduced the amount of trash dumped on city streets.
Air Vents
Ever notice these funny looking pipes protruding from the sidewalk like a submarine periscope or vents seemingly to nowhere? Wonder what they’re for? When a building has a boiler in the basement, it requires air to support combustion. When there isn’t enough incoming air to support the combustion of fuel, fresh air must be brought from the outside. These pipes provide fresh air to the boiler.
Phone Booths
Once upon a time when you needed to make a phone call from outside, you would look for a walk-in phone booth, gather up some change, and hope that the phone was working. How times have changed. While the phone booths have long ago went the way of the dinosaurs, payphones are still around, but not for long. NYC recently announced it is planning on removing the 3,000 remaining payphones throughout the city. The existing payphones are in kiosks that usually double as homeless shelters and urinals. The only reason they were still around is for the advertising revenue they generate. Within the last couple of years, Link NYC kiosks have popped up around the city providing a communications network of charging stations, internet access, and free phone service paid for by the advertising revenue. These also have a dedicated 911 emergency button which may end up displacing FDNY/ NYPD call boxes.
Call Boxes
Before the advent of cell phones, police call boxes and FDNY fire alarm boxes were the only means to report an emergency from the street. In the 1970’s FDNY boxes were retrofitted to include both fire department and police emergency calls. With approximately 14,000 locations throughout the city, emergency call boxes cost the city about $8 million a year to maintain. The FDNY reports that only about 2.6% of emergency calls they receive come from these boxes and 90% of those are false alarms. The Giuliani and Bloomberg administration tried to have the boxes removed due to the cost and propensity for false alarms, but in 2011 a federal judge responding to a hearing impaired rights advocacy group ruled in favor of maintaining them until the city developed a suitable alternative. The boxes have been maintained and act as a backup in the event cell service is disrupted, such as during 9/11. The design of the box indicates the age, with simple more modern boxes in rectangular stanchions, and older boxes made of cast iron with more ornate embellishments, such as scrollwork and finials.
Sidewalk Vaults
Some older buildings have cellars that extend underneath the sidewalk. In Soho, you can find many of these hollow sidewalks or vaults by their cast iron gratings with inset glass prisms called pavement lights. Originally used in ship decks, these prisms were subsequently adopted for buildings as a means to bring daylight into basement vaults. At night, interior lighting produces a glowing effect. Problems with cracked prisms and leaking grates led some building owners to cover them with diamond plate. However, there are still a few buildings that maintain them.
Streetlights
The first streetlights were illuminated by candles and oil, then gas, and finally electricity. With each development in lighting technology, the typology of the streetlights changed according to the styles of the time. Gas lamps were introduced around 1825. The lamps were mounted on ornate cast iron posts. By 1829, over 2,400 lamp posts were installed from the Battery north up Broadway. The technology of gas lighting improved in 1893 when a new gas burner system was introduced, increasing the brightness three-fold. Gas street lighting remained even after the introduction of electric arc streetlights in 1880. 44,653 gas lamps were still in service in 1913. The arc lamps were mainly used in commercial areas, and gas in residential. With the further development of tungsten, then mercury vapor, and sodium vapor lighting, the number of cast iron lamp post types continued to be developed to accommodate all means of illumination. By 1934, 76 different types of posts were being used. The primary styles included Bishops Crook, Mast Arm, Reverse Scroll, and twin bracket posts. These ornate cast iron posts lasted into the better part of the 1950’s and 1960’s before new aluminum and the familiar octagonal galvanized steel posts started to replace them. These posts were designed for the common “cobra head” luminaire. Many of the old lamp posts were also adapted to accommodate the new luminaries. By the 1970’s, most of the cast iron posts were replaced when the organization Friends of Cast Iron Architecture reached an agreement with the city to preserve about 30 of the old lamp posts.
By chance, additional old survivors were discovered and preserved. These 62 lampposts and four wall bracket lamps were designated with NYC landmark status. In 1980 reproduction Bishop’s Crook cast iron lamp posts were being installed in several historic districts. By 2019, nearly all the city’s 396,572 high pressure sodium and metal halide streetlights were retrofitted with energy efficient LED luminaries.
I have only scratched the surface with a few examples representing a small portion of the historic underpinnings that contributed to the growth of the metropolis. We are literally surrounded by hundreds of years of infrastructural change. The fabric of the city is in constant flux, being upgraded and improved to keep pace with technology. The ground beneath your feet is an ever-shifting pathway for power, communications, steam, and water, and the city’s streets are the arteries in which the lifeblood of the city flows.
