These antique NJ street lamps might still be up in your town

Not too many people notice streetlamps. We usually take them for granted.

Most of New Jersey's streetlights come on when it gets dark and go off when the sun comes up. That was not always the case. Up until about a decade ago, one of our utilities in our state, PSE&G still had one guy lighting the remaining gas lamps.

Yes, there were and perhaps still are a few gas lamps around the state. It seems about a decade ago most of the gas street lamps were finally phased out.

The municipality of South Orange had the most remaining gas lamps in the country and about a decade ago went through an experiment to turn them on and off automatically.

Whether some towns still have some up as relics of a bygone era or still have some old original streetlights, there are some pretty antique look lamps out there.

Historic towns like Riverton in South Jersey still have some of the old gaslight fixtures up to this day that go along nicely with the architecture of much of the town.

If you look closely in some of the older parts of our New Jersey towns you can still find a few. The six shown in this post were taken in Ewing and the one below is from Riverton. Towns like Glen Ridge still had a few not long ago.

Here in New Jersey, we tend to take for granted some of the history that is all around us. Back when these things served to illuminate the streets at night, "gaslighting" had an entirely different meaning than it has today.

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Dennis Malloy only.

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