The problem with the enormous “sun towers” that illuminated Madison Square Park in the 1880s
The first street lights to illuminate New York City came from home oil lamps. In 1697, the Common Council mandated “that all and every of the house keepers within this city shall put out lights in their windows fronting ye respective streets,” according to a 1997 Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) report.
In 1762, oil lamps were installed on city streets, with watchmen paid to oversee them. By the 1820s, gas-lit, cast-iron street lamps gave off their weak, smelly glow while lighting the way along New York’s expanding roadways, per the LPC report.
But in 1880, a new type of light was ready to replace the gas lamp: electric light. That year, the Brush Electric Light & Power Company built Manhattan’s first arc street lamps along Broadway between 14th through 26th Streets (above illustration).
But the Brush people had another idea: illuminating Madison Square with massive arc lamps that were dubbed “sun towers.”
“At the top of a mast of 160 feet was a circular carriage, to which were attached enormous electric lamps of 6,000 candlepower each,” wrote Miriam Berman in her 2001 book, Madison Square: The Park and Its Celebrated Landmarks.
The goal of so much light was to illuminate the park and surrounding streets, which in the Gilded Age were the heart of Gotham’s theater and shopping district. What could go wrong with powerful bright light to guide people on their way?
Plenty. “Unfortunately, they were almost blinding to people standing nearby, and the ladies complained that they appeared almost ghostly in this bright light,” wrote Berman.
A Brooklyn Daily Times article agreed. Arc light “hurts the eyes by its constant flicker and emits a ghastly, blueish light that is the reverse of pleasant,” the newspaper reported.
I couldn’t find out when these giant showers of light were removed from Madison Square Park. But arc street lamps continued to be in use through the 1910s, per the LPC report, when improvements to incandescent light put an end to the arc-lamp era on New York’s streets.
[Top image: Scientific American, 1881; second image: Wikipedia]
