So the mail box color question got me thinking, what was the predominant fire hydrant color in the 50s? I know this is going to be tougher to answer because they were not regulated by a government agency, and will also depend on what part of the country you are referencing, so I guess a better question would be what color do you remember the hydrants being, and what part of the country are you referring to?
I have color photos of Camden New Jersey (The County Seat of my home town) showing fire hydrants painted yellow in the mid 50s. I have also seen 50s photos with the hydrants base painted red and the crown silver, but I cannot recall the location of those photos.
The first color I recall as a child (born 1968) was red, white and blue for the bicentennial.
Just wondering what the different practices were throughout the country.
Thanks!
P.S. This question is not 50s specific. How about what colors may have been used in the 40s and the 60s as well?
I think that depended on where you lived, I recall seeing yellow hydrants growing up in my neighborhood, (L.A. suburbs 1970’s) but I can also recall seeing red hydrants and even silver hydrants while visiting family out of state. So I think it depended on what standards the local or state authority mandates as I think red hydrants are still quite common.
Yes, this question is way too location specifc, particularly when you get out to villages and suburbs which adopted their own paint schemes which changed over time (and I too remember the bi-centennial hydrant schemes all over the place when I was a kid).
Don’t go by 1940s/1950s color movies, unless you want to know what color the hydrant props on the movie studio’s urban backlots were painted (by the 1960s there was probably more location shooting - in color).
Actually, do you have a specific time and locale for your layout, because soon you may be asking about street name signs (I believe only within the past decade or so have some sort of uniform guidelines been established for these), trash baskets, parking meters, lamp posts, vending machines (would this be limited to gumball machines on the sidewalk, with various soda vending machines in front of gas stations et.al?), traffic signs (everyone’s favorite, the yellow stop signs gradual dissapperance), street markings, phone booths and so on.
So many things when you are working on a detailed historic urban scene and suddenly stop and think: “Wait a minute - did most businesses still have those Bell Public Telephone wall signs in 1970? And if so, what did they look like by then?” (example for illustrative purposes only, there are dozens of other such equally reasonable questions)
Because a question like this is so location specific, I thought that this might be helpful to folks who are trying to be more accurate in their detailing. Posing the question more along the lines of " what do you remember" can build sort of a database for fellow modelers.
As for me, it’s actually the one detail I am not absolutely sure of. I am modeling May of 1956 in Southern New Jersey (just outside of Philadelphia). I have 1955 photos showing street signs, 1954 photos showing yellow stop signs and pole mounted street lamps, and 1952 photos showing the Bell public telephone wall sign and the round Public Service Bus Stop sign.
The phone booth issue is a good one. Most of the folks I have spoken to seem to remember the outside phone booths not showing up until the late 50s or early 60s (hence the Bell Public Telephone wall signs).
I know a question like this is like jumping down the proverbial rabbit hole, but I figured, what the heck! Even though the information that might be gathered here will be quite location specific, it might be just the thing another modeler is looking for, and I might just get that nugget of information I was digging for as well.
Not sure how wide spread this was, but around my home town, the color of the fire hydrant was indicative of the line pressure at that hydrant. That being said, I’d almost guarantee it was not a universal color code accepted across the country, but one adopted by individual municipalities to their own systems.
Again, period perfect photos will provide the best answers.
You know what it does…it brings back the good old days of early web surfing, such as what I found when checking out the outdoor phone booth question:
“There was no other way, and the first outdoor pay phones, complete with wooden, glass-walled booths, were installed in 1905. When the Roaring Twenties rolled around, New York City alone had over 25,000 of them: yes, bona-fide phone booths, with roofs and floors and doors.”
And also such trivia as the peak-era outdoor booth was called the Airlight Booth (yes, offically) - and which is what many city model detail sets feature, such as the Walthers City Accessory set (the enclosed booth, not the open air walk-up one), so I guess even that’s not obsolete knowledge.
Da Bronx, mid '50s: Black (stands out against the concrete sidewalks.) No little blue reflectors, but the curb was painted red fifteen feet each side (total 30 feet.)
Chuck (Former Noo Yawker modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Growing up in the burbs of New York, on Long Island, I remember hydrants that were red with silver tops. I’ve painted the hydrants on my layout to match that scheme.
Where Iive now, in the suburbs of boston, I think they’re still red. However, they are black in the next town over, so I’d imagine that this is still very much a local option.
I use the fire hydrants from American Model Builders on my layout. They are metal castings.
Im NYC I seem to recall they were black with silver tops but I suppose red with silver was alaso there. The one I have on my layout has what else a dog doing his business next to it.
It’s not just the colour of the Hydrants that varies from town to town, but what about those tall 10’ or 15’ high markers next to them that makes them easy to find under all the snow we can get. These are as colourful and varied as the Hydrants themselves.
Small MA town in early 60’s, I got a job repainting some of the hydrants and call boxes in town. The hydrants were red with white tops, as they had been before. Seems like the color scheme was whatever the local folks liked. Most places, red is associated with the fire department, thus red is the predominant color.
Now with reflector paint, many places have substituted silver reflective paint for the white. Shows up better at night.
The towns I have seen with yellow or that green/yellow hydrants usually have their fire trucks painted that color too.
Since you are the town manager, mayor, governor or whatever of your locale, I think whatever you feel is to your liking is the color you should paint them.
The ones I easily recall off the bat include red, red with silver tops, silver, yellow, yellow with green tops. Like others mentioned, I seem to recall some places also had a color code of some kind, including repainting the tops a different color to show what year they were last tested. Unless you are modeling a very specific time and location, a la’ the Yosemite Valley, pretty much any color you pick will be right as far as visitors are concerned.
In the 1960s in Bloomington, Minnesota (a suburb of Minneapolis) the city ran sewer, water and Natural Gas lines down my street. We ended up with a fire hydrant on my property. When installed the hydrant was yellow with red caps and a red top and a bronze pentagonal valve at the very top. Now, looking at this hydrant on Google Earth Street View, the hydrant is all red.
My guess is the color Fire Hydrants were painted back in the 1950-60 was determined by the municipalities that they were located in.
If the color the fire hydrants were painted, is that important to you, you will need to talk to people who lived in the locality you are interested in. Be prepared to have to repaint them with every opinion expressed to you! Or, don’t ask anyone and paint them red, which would be a good safe bet!
Aside from the different color of fire hydrants,which by the way are red in the Windy city,how about the different color ‘‘Fire Trucks’’, I’ve seen,red,white,yellow and close to where I live,one of the burbs,has black,with white and gold lettering…
Ya there is no overall answer. Unlike mailboxes, which were controlled by the federal government, fire hydrants are controlled by the city or county. I suppose there may be a state that passed a law saying all fire hydrants had to be a certain color.
Interestingly enough, for modern era US modelers, there is indeed something of a standard color code for fire hydrants: NFPA 291, which has been around over a decade
Also, as mentioned, public water supplied hydrants should be yellow, private water supplied (from local wells) hydrants should be a dfferent color (red is recommended), non-potable water supplied hydrants should be violet, and inoperable hydrants should be…black (which would be an issue with New York City fire hydrants, most of which are black w/ silver caps as mentioned in a previous post).
Philadelphia fire hydrants are often a orange/red color with a green cap (I used orange and a pale green on the model hydrants for my module), although I did see some all orange hydrants - so this would mean (IF the Philly FD is following the NFPA standards), the orange green hydrants have good water flow, and the all orange ones have so-so water flow. Red caps were denoted as “poor” water flow in a different list, but since red can often fade to an off-orange in the exposed outdoors where fire hydrants reside, perhaps they should have chosen silver or grey for the poor water flow color).
Just for grins, I decided to look around my town today. Along main street, they are yellow & blue. Along my neighborhood, however, they are yellow and green, with the green painted over & peeling off what was previously orange. So if you wanted to add an extra little detail to your modern town, you could have different color codes depending on main street vs side street.
…and to throw another wrench in the works on modern hydrant, many municipalities and fire departments used their own thread pattern for years. Then a change came in the late 1980’s/early 1990’s for a National Standard thread. So new hydrants in my hometown got N.S. threads. To demaracate these, they got a white top. So it is not unusual to see a hydrant that the stem is yellow white a red/orange/green/or blue band, and a white top. The older municipal thread hydrants have a yellow top.