Gas street lighting was once widespread in nineteenth-century cities on both sides of the Atlantic. With the rise of electrical street lamps at the end of that era, gas lamps were gradually removed or replaced. Hence, finding any gas street lamps anywhere in modern American or European cities can be quite extraordinary.
New York City has retained a couple of its historic gas street lamps, but the gas street lamps in Brooklyn Heights just south of the Brooklyn Bridge are not actually from the nineteenth century. These lamps are actually much more modern. In the 1980s, the area underwent redevelopment, and one of the goals was to restore the historic atmosphere of the city streets in the neighborhood. One of the decisions made during this project was to install multiple gas street lamps along a couple of the neighborhood’s streets. These lamps almost look identical to their nineteenth century counterparts except for the absence of metal crossbars below the lanterns, which would have been used as ladder rests.
These gas street lamps are still in use today and are still lit by gas flames, and while potentially thousands of people drive by the street lamps every day, it is unlikely that most people ever notice the historically anomalous lamps.
