![]() ![]() But with more than 400 different types of lamps scattered over nearly 470 square miles, LA is one of the most diverse streetlight ecosystems anywhere in the country. ![]() ![]() And not because LA is the best-lit major city in the United States (we have miles of dark patches, while there isn’t an unlit street in all of Motor City). Not because we have the most streetlights (today that number hovers around 220,000, while Chicago’s Department of Transportation oversees more than 300,000). Los Angeles isn’t particularly well known for its streetlights. Construction of the 170 freeway which links the 5 to the Ventura Freeway, was nearly complete, so he couldn’t ride his bike there anymore. He had seen streetlights burning during daytime, evidence of municipal electrical tests. He had noticed curbs and sidewalks being installed-signs that new lights weren’t far off. Armed with a roll of Verichrome Pan black-and-white film loaded on his Kodak Hawkeye Flashfun camera, he would rush home from summer school to catch the overheads going up on newly laid suburban roads and freeway overpasses in the Valley. In 1968, when he was a teenager, Norman began to photograph streetlights. “I guess I felt a little cheated,” Norman says. Before that, it had been the real estate developer’s call. But homes on his two-block stretch of Cohasset Street, wedged between Goodland and Bellaire Avenues, dated to 1956, just before a city ordinance made streetlights a requirement in new subdivisions. Some of the tracts to the north had them, as did the neighborhoods to the west: Van Nuys, Panorama City, Winnetka, Canoga Park. This time, his block had no streetlights. In 1957, just before he turned five years old, Norman’s family bought a house in North Hollywood. He remembers how, every few months, city technicians used to clean the glass and replace the filament inside. It was a simple concrete post-top model, crowned with an acorn-shaped luminaire. As a child, Glen Norman had a streetlight directly in front of his family’s house in Westchester. ![]()
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