Hello Lamppost, Whacha Knowin'? Des Plaines Street Lights

By the end of the year, expect to see 90 new ornamental streetlights throughout the downtown area. 80% of this $1.2 million project is funded by a grant from the Illinois Transportation Enhancement Program; the remainder is funded through TIF 1. There hasn't been any official word on what these lamps will look like; in that light, let's look at the streetlights that have been used downtown in the past.

These were the first, placed on Ellinwood Street around 1915.

This is the only example of this light, which was placed outside the Gillespie Printery building on Miner street around 1913.

These attractive lights were downtown Des Plaines' standard from 1926-1956. The Spanish-style lantern atop a concrete base was modern but still fit in well with the architecture of the city, particularly the Spanish style Des Plaines Theatre and Des Plaines State Bank. Later, around 1946, some of the broken lanterns were replaced by "Acorn" style globes. These standards were all removed in 1954 as these pedestrian-scaled lights were replaced by tall highway lights.

The mercury vapor lights to the left went up soon thereafter. While they were very modern in design, they didn't do much for the sidewalk experience; just shiny poles. This type of light is for lighting the street, not the sidewalk. Inexplicably, one of these still exists at the corner of Ellinwood and Pearson. These were in turn replaced by the similar, but even taller, sodium vapor lights to the right in the mid-80s.

So in the mid-1990s the city installed many of this style light in parts of downtown. While not unattractive, this style light tries to look old-fashioned but isn't; you can see many similar lights in shopping centers across the country. Worse, the acorn tops aren't energy-efficient; light shines in all directions, adding to light pollution in the sky while doing a poor job of lighting the sidewalk. The paint on these lights is fading and the globes are discoloring.

These lights are only in Metropolitan Square. They light the street and sidewalk somewhat better than the acorns, and they're not as tall as the Cobras. But they have that fake old-style look, too.

 Then there were these, used at the C&NW stations.
 
And the earliest lights of all