Wisdom of crowds
- photo by Mitch Waxman
UPDATE- one of the sharp eyed Lords of the Pentacle has recognized the mysterious column I mentioned in yesterday’s posting (An Odd Impulse) as being part of the Queensboro Bridge- the Great Machine itself. Following text is from the comments of TJ Connick, to whom I am now quite indebted:
Looks quite like the light stanchion that once adorned end of Queensboro Bridge wall on SE corner 2nd Av & 60th St. You can see a shot of it on NY Public Library’s Digital Gallery. Use Digital ID of 707887F in the search window. Its cousin at 59th St is still there last time I looked. Maybe someone can take a look and compare. Seem to recall a lot of time and money spent on restoration of that end about 25-30 years back. Think they took it down and lost it?
A glimpse at Google “street view” confirms. See also library’s picture: Digital ID of 730938F. It’s an old shot of 59th St stanchion. Matches yours, but yours has collar with the depending decorations upside down. Make a ransom note and send it to Dept of Transportation – could be a big score.
- image courtesy NYPL Digital Gallery
On behalf of everyone reading this posting, BRAVO TJ!
Additionally, Kevin Walsh of Forgotten-NY sends along this link to the NYTimes.com from 2001 concerning the lamp post.







Wow, that’s quite a discovery…very nice to see. I was wondering if TJ Connick is the same I grew up with in Astoria on 47th st?
I enjoy this page very much, thanks for your work and research..
allen vella
February 3, 2011 at 1:45 pm
[...] two posts: “an odd impulse“, and “wisdom of crowds” discuss the discovery and identification in some [...]
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