Water and Power Associates Informing the Public about Critical Water and Energy Issues facing Los Angeles and California

Historical Notes

The street light seen above is dubbed the "CD 913"; the shaft and arms dating from 1948. Not seen here is the base, reused from the Keystone "Broadway Rose" of late 1919. The "Roses" were dedicated in January, 1920. The luminaires are an early 21st Century modification, bringing back the look of the GE Form 81 teardrops that were part of the 1948 installation.

This is the Los Angeles Times's fourth building since it started publishing in 1881. Click HERE to see views of the earlier LA Times buildings.

Historical Notes

The 1908-built Beaux Arts building seen above was built in 1908. It was originally home to Hamburger’s Department Store which evolved into May Company and later Macy's. Click HERE to see more.

Historical Notes

The Vermonica Exhibit is a display of 25 vintage streetlights of Los Angeles that was erected in 1992 as an artwork sponsored by the Department of Cultural Affairs and voluntary labor contributed significantly by staff of the Field Operations Division of the Bureau of Street Lighting. The artist was Sheila Kline and the artwork was named 'Vermonica' for its location adjacent to the intersection of Vermont Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard. In 2020 the exhibit was moved further West on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Historical Notes

The CD 923 street light closest to the camera displays the original luminaire--an Incandescent teardrop. The CD 923 behind it has received a Mercury cobra upgrade. The intersection behind it received an upgraded traffic light with a mast-arm suspended over Western Avenue. It was standard operating practice to update a few of the existing street lights closest to the intersection at the same time the new traffic signals went in.

The CD 923 street lights were sometimes referred to as the "Llewellyn Slayers." They are responsible for annihilating the entire run of the eponymous Llewellyn "Pico" cluster lights between Main Street and Vermont Avenue. Other Llewellyn clusters along Figueroa Street (downtown) and Main Street (between Downtown and Jefferson Boulevard) also fell to the advancing CD 923 posts. The Llewellyn "Western" twins on Western Avenue were replaced by the CD 923 posts North of Wilshire Boulevard. I'm not sure how far North the CD 923s extended on Western (definitely not as far as Melrose as documented in the 1969 film "Model Shop"), but those CD 923s were removed in the early 1970s along with the surviving Llewellyn "Western" twins.

The CD 923 posts did not limit their wrath exclusively to Llewellyn product. The entire run of Marbelite twins on Wilshire Boulevard between Fairfax Avenue and the Beverly Hills city limits was also replaced by the CD 923 in the late 1940s.

Historical Notes

Click HERE to see more Early Views of Pacific Dual-Lamp UM-1747 Streetlights.

Historical Notes

There are eight of these California Special streetlights located around the El Portal Theatre in North Hollywood, four on Lankershim and the other four around the corner on Weddington.  These are 21st Century transplants. The California Special was never found on either of those two thoroughfares.

Historical Notes

The “California Special” was designed by Westinghouse, but produced locally by Llewellyn Iron Works.  Chris Burden dubbed these "The Magnolia Double" for his Urban Light sculpture down on Wilshire Blvd.

Today, there are still plenty of these to be found on the Magnolia Boulevard between Lankershim and Cahuenga.  They were previously found in Leimert Park. Single lamp versions use to line Burbank and Magnolia Blvds. in Burbank, but those are all gone, too.

Historical Notes

Carroll Avenue is a two block long street with an international reputation for restored Victorian homes (1880 – 1910). Three, four and five globe authentic fixtures taken from various locations in the City and which date from that era now grace both sides of Carroll Avenue.

Historical Notes

The entire 1300 block of Carroll Avenue was listed under the National Register of Historic Places in 1976.

Historical Notes

The "Melrose Hill Specials" can be found along three streets: Marathon Street, Melrose Hill, and an intersecting street also called Melrose Hill. This one is on the corner of Marathon and Melrose Hill.

Historical Notes

Melrose Hill is a small neighborhood located in the Hollywood Studio District of East Hollywood consisting of only a few dozen homes. It is located north of Melrose Ave., South of Santa Monica Blvd., East of Western Ave., and West of the 101. (aka Hollywood Freeway).

Historical Notes

Designed by architects Gerald Allen and Kent Bloomer in 1983, the above light fixture is found throughout New York's Central Park.  It is almost identical to the ‘Melrose Hill Special’ found in East Hollywood. ^

Historical Notes

The cast-aluminum shell of the luminaire is constructed of elliptical curves adorned with abstracted leaves that follow and twist along the curves. The lantern is crowned with an acorn cap.

(n.d.)* - View of a 7-bulb electrolier lamp in an early Los Angeles City park.

(n.d.)^^ - This pole was installed exclusively in the Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles which is now the location of the homes of many Hollywood movie stars and the Playboy Mansion.

(n.d.)^^ - This "Windsor Square Special" originally installed as part of land development in 1914 in the Windsor Square area of Hancock Park was recently refurbished, including the use of incandescent lamps under a special policy adopted by the City Council.

(n.d.)^^ - No longer in service, this Victoria Park special was affectionately called a 'plumber's nightmare' by maintenance forces. It graced an area of upscale Victorian-style homes from shortly after the turn-of-the-century until nearly 1960.

The Modern Look - Century City Special

(ca. 1960s)^^ - Century City was developed as a major business center in the early 1960's principally sponsored by the Aluminum Corporation of America (ALCOA), hence the use of these aluminum davit poles throughout the streets within Century City.

(1960)* – View looking west on Santa Monica Boulevard in Century City.  A man stands at the base of a newly installed streetlight known as the ‘Century City Special’.

Historical Notes

Los Angeles International Airport installed eight M-1000 mercury-vapor luminaires mounted atop 57' Pacific Union metal poles, 60 poles spaced 160' apart, six FTC.  M-400 mercury vapor used on perimeter roadway and approaches.

Historical Notes

Eaton dual-arm contemporary streetlights played a crucial role in revamping the exterior curbside lighting, as part of the first and second phases of the $118-million LAX Curbside Appeal and Roadway Improvement Project. The newly installed street lighting consumes 48 percent less energy than the 33-year-old, high-pressure sodium lights they replaced.

Historical Notes

In 2013, the first 13 of the dual-arm contemporary fixtures were installed for the unveiling of the new $1.9 billion Tom Bradley International Terminal.  78 additional Y-shaped fixtures were subsequently installed throughout the airport.

Historical Notes

These contemporry Eaton Electroliers were inspired by the ’60s style of the Theme Building and took their sculptural form from airplane propellers.

Historical Notes

The streetlights’ two arms illuminate different areas and levels of the roadway. The resulting uniform illumination meets the roadway lighting requirements (average 2.5 foot-candles) for both the Lower/Arrivals and Upper/Departures levels at the airport, which serves 70.7 million passengers each year.

Historical Notes

Scroll arms (sometimes called Genie arms for their passing resemblance to Aladdin's Lamp) are pretty common on the pedestrian-scaled lights that have appeared in Los Angeles over the past couple of decades. Usually, those street lights feature skirts surrounding the the globes. The Highland Special Pole does not show this feature.

Historical Notes

The Highland Special Pole can be found on its namesake thoroughfare Highland Avenue from Yucca Street to a point North of Franklin Avenue.

Historical Notes

Scroll arms (sometimes called Genie arms for their passing resemblance to Aladdin's Lamp) are pretty common on the pedestrian-scaled lights that have appeared in Los Angeles over the past couple of decades. Usually, those street lights feature skirts surrounding the the globes. The Highland Special Pole does not show this feature.

Historical Notes

The twins were originally lamped with 400 Watt Metal-Halide, but were updated recently to 100 Watt LEDs.

Historical Notes

Los Angeles has 215,000 street lights, 2nd most on any major city in the United States.  Since 2009, LA started converting all of these lights to LEDs. Today, LED lights are capable of producing almost double the ratings compared to when they started.  Millions of dollars have been saved by the City through this form of conservation.^

Historical Notes

Today, Cobra Head LED streetlights are commonly used for street lighting applications because they are shaped in such a way that diffuses light to cover a wide patch of ground and, more importantly, they are highly energy efficient.

Historical Notes

In 2015, the LA City Bureau of Streetlighting kicked off a program that integrates telecommunication companies’ cell sites with newly installed streetlight electroliers.  The combination streetlights (called ‘Smartpoles’) have gone through several iterations of designs as can be seen in the above image.  Originally installed in the Hollywood area only, they can now be found throughout the City (200-plus as of 2020).

Historical Notes

The Union Metal (UM-70149) streetlight dates back to the early 1950s.

Historical Notes

The Lumec RN 20 luminaire would have replaced a Mercury or HPS cobra. But, that cobra in turn had replaced what looks to be the original side-mounted teardrop fixture.

Note the typical "L.A." finial; we also see it on the CD 929 and CD 923 street lights among others.

Historical Notes

"So why is this here? This was the only one around. It's definitely NOT the winner nor any of the entries in the recent "L.A. Lights the Way" competition. It also does not appear on any of the LABSL maps. Maybe erected for a movie or TV shoot, given the Courthouse background?

And what's with that little upward pointing thing about 3/4 of the way up the pole? It's too high to benefit the sidewalk and is pointed in the wrong direction." –Glen Norman

Historical Notes

Marked by three ornate ribbons of roses climbing up their safts, the eponymous Broadway Roses, designed by a General Electric engineer and originally installed in 1919, used to extend from Aliso Street to Pico Boulevard.  Given that Broadway was the first L.A. street to have ornamental lights, hailed in the papers as “the radiant way,” this lamp’s lavish design should come as no surprise.  (In fact, the Roses originally shared Broadway with an even grander, more filigreed type of post—the Spanish Renaissance-inspired Broadway Special, designed by the same engineer.)  The response was overwhelming:  “This is one of the most elaborate jobs of ornamental electroliers ever made on the coast,” the Los Angeles Times observed, “and is a 100 percent home product.”  Unfortunately, the excitement didn’t last.  During the 1950s, the shafts and luminaires of the Broadway Roses were replaced with more functional, higher intensity, yet decidedly more somber CD-913 overheads, leaving only the original bases intact.  Today there are only a handful of complete models remaining in Los Angeles, which can be found running down Sixth Street between Olvie and Flower Streets.  The Broadway Specials, incidentally, have vanished altogether.*

Historical Notes

These dual-lamp electroliers (UM-1906's) were originally installed in the mid 1920’s. They were manufactured by the Union Metal Company of Canton, Ohio.  The Bureau of Street Lighting still uses these UM-1906's in select areas of Downtown Los Angeles.

Historical Notes

Although similar in many ways, the dual-lamp UM-1906 should not be confused with the Broadway Rose and Broadway Special. Click HERE to see the differences.

Historical Notes

In the photo above, the large building in the distance is the Biltmore Hotel and the building being demolished is the Biltmore Theatre, built in 1924.   Also, the LA Central Library is to the right (out of view).

Historical Notes

Although there are a limited number of these Union Metal Electroliers still standing today (mostly refurbished), hundreds were originally installed in the mid 1920's. They replaced the popular five-globe Llewellyn streetlights mainly in Downtown Los Angeles.  Click HERE to see more.

Historical Notes

The first CicLAvia event, on October 10, 2010 opened a stretch of streets from East Hollywood through downtown Los Angeles into Boyle Heights. Over 100,000 people turned out, exceeding organizers’ expectations. The event itself was inspired by Ciclovia, a similar, annual open streets event taking place in Bogota, Colombia since 1974.

Over 30 subsequent CicLAvia events have taken place in communities across Los Angeles County, usually covering a 5-10 mile stretch of city streets. Some of the locations used are Pasadena, South Los Angeles, Culver City, Thai Town and West Hollywood. In 2013, CicLAvia—To the Sea ran 15 miles from downtown Los Angeles to Venice Beach.*

Historical Notes

The Wilshire Special streetlights were originally installed in 1928 along Wilshire Boulevard from Park View to Fairfax Ave. In the 1930s these ornate electroliers were also installed on the remaining sections of Wilshire all the way to downtown.

Click HERE to see more on the history of the Wilshire Special.

Historical Notes

The Llewellyn "Washingtons" are no longer found on Washington Boulevard, but a small run of them can be found on West 11th Street between Broadway and Hope Street.

Historical Notes

The most common of the incandescent multiple globe electroliers of the early 1900s were those manufactured by the Llewellyn Iron Works of Los Angeles.  The firm became so identified with this style of street light that any multiple globe electrolier became commonly known as a Llewellyn.  The Llewellyn Iron Works, founded in 1889‐1890, was one of the largest metal working facilities in Los Angeles.  It manufactured structural steel – including that for the Bradbury Building (1893).

Historical Notes

Click HERE to see more in Early Views of the L.A. Plaza.

Historical Notes

The Llewellyns that populated Broadway from 1905 to 1919 had 7 globes. In fact, no other Llewellyn cluster light design in Los Angeles had more than 5 globes in deference to the Broadway originals.

Historical Notes

This is a Rose base, modeled on and scaled down from the original 1919 bases that still populate Broadway. Keystone Iron and Steel Works produced the originals.

Historical Notes

In 1993, artist Sheila Klein created a sculptural installation out of 25 vintage light poles in the median of a run-of-the-mill strip mall at the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and Vermont Avenue in East Hollywood. The piece, titled “Vermonica,” was crafted as a gesture of healing: an illuminating monument to mark a site that had gone up in flames during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

Controversy, naturally, ensued. Part of the problem stemmed from the fact that “Vermonica” occupied a legal gray area: The bureau had supplied the light poles and Klein had made the work with a small grant from the Department of Cultural Affairs, but the sculpture stood on private property and had never been formally acquired by the city of L.A.

Fast-forward 24 years to November 2017, when the sculpture was mysteriously removed by the Bureau of Street Lighting without notice. It then materialized in a reconfigured state before the bureau’s headquarters a block to the east. The strip mall owner had asked for the piece to be removed to accommodate some construction. But engineers for the bureau had failed to notify Klein or the Department of Cultural Affairs.*

Historical Notes

The above photo was taken on 10-23-20 at the LABSL Field Operations Division on Santa Monica Blvd. Within a week of this shot, the poles were moved to the reconstituted "Vermonica" to the West.

Historical Notes

Vermonica is a public art installation initiated by artist Sheila Klein in May 1993, uninstalled in November 2017 and reinstalled in a new location in December 2020.  Vermonica is now located on Santa Monica Boulevard at Lyman Place, opposite the Cahuenga Branch Library.

The sculpture is named for the intersection of Santa Monica Boulevard and Vermont Avenue in East Hollywood. Some of the artwork's 25 lamp poles date to 1925, the year Los Angeles's Bureau of Street Lighting opened.  Placed in front of a Rite-Aid, the lights glow to illuminate the mini-mall parking lot where it was located at specific times during the night.  Sheila Klein cooperated with Los Angeles businesses, bureaus, departments and neighborhoods to erect what she describes as a "formal composition" and a "drive-in museum" of street lighting.   Vermonica was envisioned initially as a temporary installation with borrowed poles from the nearby streetlight yard on Santa Monica Boulevard. The sculpture was so popular that it remained in place. Vermonica precedes Chris Burden's Urban Light by 15 years.*

Historical Notes

On November 21, 2017, artist Sheila Klein was informed by a member of the public that her artwork had been removed without her knowledge. The elements of the work had been moved to the front lawn of the Bureau of Street Lighting, and reinstalled in a curved line. In a statement, Sheila Klein announced that the reinstalled work is not Vermonica.

An assistant director with the Bureau of Street Lighting said the move is not permanent and was necessitated by construction work in the parking lot where the sculpture was originally located. "Our sense of urgency was to protect and preserve the streetlights so that they wouldn't be damaged or removed by someone other than us," Assistant Director Megan Hackney told The Los Angeles Times.

On June 6, 2019, artist Sheila Klein launched a petition seeking restoration of Vermonica in light of newly discovered emails from Bureau of Street Lighting staff that show that BSL intentionally dismantled Vermonica to create a new city staff designed work they called "Vermonica".

On January 1, 2020, artist Sheila Klein announced on Instagram that an agreement had been reached with the City of Los Angeles for her to restore Vermonica. The newly reinstalled sculpture was completed and re-lit by the artist on December 1, 2020.*

Historical Notes

VERMONICA is named for the intersection where it was originally located, Vermont Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard. Currently located at 4582 Santa Monica Boulevard at Lyman Place, it is an Urban Candelabra. The installation, which is 120' long and 30' tall, is made of a selection of 25 streetlights from the City of Los Angeles. Some of the streetlights are current, others are rare examples of obsolete poles from the city's past. These 25 poles represent the diversity of the over 400 types currently in use in Los Angeles. The range of materials, styles and historical periods displayed in Vermonica hopes to encourage people to notice the variety and sculptural nature of the street lights they see every day, and to appreciate the efforts of the Bureau of Street Lighting. Vermonica was conceived and executed by artist Sheila Klein. She incorporates the intimate domestic scale of candlesticks into an Urban Candelabra for the household of the street. Vermonica seeks to uncover romantic truths about the city. By accenting one overlooked layer of our environment, Klein encourages further consideration of all our urban layers.^

Historical Notes

Chris Burden's "Urban Light" installed on the sidewalk in front of LACMA has been one of LA's favorite and most photographed landmarks since its unveiling in February 2008. The piece incorporates 202 antique street lights from cities and neighborhoods in and around Los Angeles.

Urban Light is composed of 202 street lamps arranged in a near grid. The lamps mostly came from the streets of Southern California, including Hollywood, Glendale, and Anaheim, with some from Portland, Oregon. There are 16 different streetlight models represented, many of which were commissioned for particular neighborhoods and streets.*

Historical Notes

The sculpture's glass globes are of three general shapes: round, acorn, and cone. The 309 LED bulbs are solar powered and switch on from dusk until dawn, governed by an astronomical timer.*

Historical Notes

The Broadway Rose, the largest and most ornate of the models, is represented by six lamps. The style was found in downtown Los Angeles; a few can still be seen on Sixth Avenue between Olive and Flower Streets.

Historical Notes

Los Angeles Times critic Christopher Hawthorne described Urban Light as "a kind of pop temple, deftly straddling the lines between art and architecture and between seriousness and irony. It's also a joy to walk through, but there's no getting around the fact that it turns what might have been an actual public square along Wilshire—a space defined from day to day by the people using it—into an outdoor room for one sizable and very insistent piece of art."

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