Did you know Windsor Square has its very own street with old English Street lanterns? Thanks to Kim Cooper and Richard Schave of Esotouric for their wildly illuminating webinar last night on Los Angeles’s street lights for sharing this bit of history of our neighborhood.
According to Cooper, the street we know of as “Little” Bronson, was originally developed as Stratford Way complete with old English lantern street lights. The McCarthy Company, who developed Carthay Circle. built fourteen, “moderately priced, two-story old English homes” on the block between 5th and 6th Street in Windsor Square. The lots are among the smallest in the neighborhood and face a hedge with no other homes across the street. In keeping with the English theme, the developers styled the street lights as English lanterns that were mounted in redwood poles.
In their research for the webinar, Cooper and Schave found a photograph of the lanterns in “The Art of Street Lighting in Los Angeles,” by Eddy Feldman, a longtime local resident, published by Dawson’s Book Shop in 1971. Feldman was a member of the board of Municipal Art Commissioners who Schave and Cooper credit for creating a culture of appreciation and preservation of our city’s street lights. Upon finding the photo, they were delighted to see the lights were still in existence on the street. But they were even more delighted to learn the recently, the City’s Bureau of Street Lighting had rebuilt the lanterns, replaced the bulbs with new LED lights, and mounted them on new redwood posts so they are ready for another 100 years.
We stopped by today for a closer look and were equally delighted to see these fanciful lights on this very special neighborhood street. Thanks to Cooper and Schave, I have a new appreciation for our neighborhood street lights and the efforts of many preservationists who made sure we can enjoy these lights today.
