WHERE HISTORY LIVES PART 21: The Croton Dummy Light

 Note: We are indebted to Carl Oechsner, Gretchen Bock, and The Croton Friends of History for providing this information.

The "Dummy Light" sits prominently in the Village of Croton on Hudson. This is a local historic landmark, located at the intersection of Old Post Road South and Grand Street. Technically, it’s a “dummy light,” a traffic light that stands on a pedestal in the middle of an intersection. However, some Crotonites say that the traffic light is called the “dummy light” because it’s not very intelligent to stand out in the middle of the road with traffic going by!

There are still at least three dummy lights surviving in New York State. Besides Croton-on-Hudson, there are operating dummy lights in Beacon and upstate in Canajoharie. There have been numerous requests in recent years for their removal due to safety concerns, but their historic value has kept these treasures at their original locations. Reactions are quite mixed. Some find it charming; others see it as ugly and out-of-date; a few think of it as a community heirloom
Locally, before 1926 motorists coming to a busy intersection had no traffic light to help them. Therefore, a new (1926)  Village of Croton ordinance stated, “No vehicle approaching a street intersection where a traffic light is in operation shall enter such street intersection while such traffic light shows red or yellow, and such vehicle shall enter such intersection only when such intersection shows green.”
Structure: Part of the brick base of the light covers a village cistern that supplied water to upper Grand Street and connected to another cistern at the bottom of Mt. Airy Road until 1929. The portion of the brick base that is triangular in shape and points toward Old Post Road South was added later to protect the cistern from being hit by motor vehicles. The actual metal structure holding the light is about seven feet tall.
Over the years Croton village officials have talked about replacing the historic dummy light with a modern hanging light, but public feedback has been strongly against the idea. The principal argument centers around the fact that such lights are extremely rare and historic.

Learn More:  History: The earliest traffic signals in the U.S. were patented in Chicago in 1910. The system used the non-illuminated words “stop” and “proceed.” In 1912 Salt Lake City invented an electric traffic light that used red and green lights. The first automatic traffic signal using color lights, red and green, was built in San Francisco in 1917. HOWEVER: The meaning of the color of the lights varied from town to town and time to time. For example, in Manhattan, different colors were used to indicate the direction of traffic; red for north-south movement (main avenues), yellow for all traffic to stop, and green for east-west movement (side streets). Stationed at each tower was a traffic officer to enforce the signals.
 
Later, the light colors were standardized to what we all recognize today: red for stop, green for go, and yellow for caution. Modern traffic signals were formally standardized nationally in 1935 via an early edition of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. Making traffic signals look basically the same all across the country meant that drivers didn’t have to figure out an unfamiliar signal, which made driving safer for everyone.
The color of traffic lights representing stop and go are likely derived from those used to identify port (red) and starboard (green) in maritime rules governing right of way, where the vessel on the left must stop for the one crossing on the right.

Richard H. Becker, MD