Utility poles in old photos

Submitted by CityUnseen on

Full disclosure, I am doing research for an article about overhead utility lines in 19th and early 20th Century Hong Kong for www.cityunseen.hk. City Unseen is a non-profit educational project about Hong Kong's built environment. 

I've been trying to identify utility poles in old photographs of Hong Kong, and was wondering if anyone could provide any expertise. I will credit you if you wish to be credited. 

I know that Hong Kong Electric started putting their electric cables underground in 1905, and that telephone cables were undergrounded in the mid-1920s, so on Hong Kong Island there's only a 30-40 year window where you can find utility poles in photographs. 

  1.  I can find plenty of pictures from the 1910s and 1920s showing telephone/telegraph poles, but have you seen any photos showing overhead power lines in urban areas?
  2. There seem to be a lot fewer street scene photos of Kowloon in the early 20th Century available, but I don't see power or telephone lines in the few pictures I can find. Does anyone know if CLP used overhead distribution wires in urban Kowloon and when they phased them out?
  3. Can anyone identify the tall trussed pole in this photo of Pedder Street in the 1920s? It looks like some early lamp posts, but it's missing the lamp. There's another pole like it in this photo which is labeled as 1950s Des Voeux Road, but appears to be an earlier decade based on the number of rickshaws and the way people are dressed. 

 

Regarding street scene photos of Kowloon in the early 20th Century, have you looked through the book 'A Century of Kowloon Roads and Streets' written by Cheng Po-hung and Toong Po-ming?

If a streetlight, the illumination section at the top of the pole/pylon would appear to be too far above street level for it to be effective. 

Considering the era the image is in, the light could be an electric glowing filament, burning town gas illumination  or more unlikely acetylene gas, which does give a very bright light.

However, your image does provide yet another interesting iteration on the pagoda/traffic police refuge/traffic lights theme.

No doubt someone can date it by the cinema poster film showing.

So I found this latticed pole. 

https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/g732kf251#?c=&m=&s=&cv=&xywh=-131%2C-597%2C3281%2C3114

This photo also appears in Austin Coates' book "A Mountain of Light", where he identifies it as the first electric streetlight in Hong Kong. If you look carefully, the wires coming out of the nearest pole are connected to the latticed pole about halfway down. 

There's also this one here with wires coming out of it.

https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607r465#?c=&m=&s=&cv=&xywh=-1304%2C-129%2C4401%2C2573

Re: the ones that appear in later years that don't appear to have any lights or wires attached, do you think that Hong Kong Electric could have left the poles up for years after they became obsolete? 

 

 

Interesting how flimsy these pylons appear to be. Just sunk into the roadway pavement with no further support (other images show concrete blocks around the pylon base)

I wonder how the lamps and switches at the top of the unsupported pylons were maintained? Send a child-worker up a swaying pylon? (electricity and children do not mix well!)

I suggest a look at this site https://williamsugghistory.co.uk/lighting/street-lamps/rochester-littleton-2/

All you need to know, and more! They were early suppliers to Hong Kong.

The electric/gas companies may have left the pylons abandoned in the streets after use until the government forced them to be removed.