The Street Lamp Graveyard

Los Angeles’ street lights create an unforgettable night scene for air travelers, and for generations they’ve lighted the worlds of fictional detectives such as Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe or Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins. Otherwise, few Angelenos ever notice them.

Aficionados know where to find them. Dozens of styles, some dating to the late 19th century, now rest in peace in the Bureau of Street Lighting’s graveyard of red brass, bronze and cast-iron poles. Art Newborn, street lighting electrical supervisor, points to a lantern-shaped street light in the bureau’s “museum room” at Virgil Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard. “Over on Bronson are the only wooden street light poles that have these particular lanterns, and the [residents] there fight to keep them,” he says.

Another repository of street lights is in a nondescript strip mall a few blocks from the Bureau of Street Lighting, on Santa Monica Boulevard and Vermont Avenue. There the curious will find an exhibit of 25 historical lamps arranged by artist Sheila Klein.

Virginia L. Comer also celebrates the city’s street lights in a new book, “Streetlights,” one of the “Urban Details” series books from Glendale’s Balcony Press. She details the history of local street lighting, from today’s contemporary styles to the pueblo days, when homeowners “were required to hang a lighted lantern in front of their doors at dark.”