Looks like it was yellow and they painted it blue. Paints falling off! Okay I will paint my hydrants red. Thanks everyone!
WWII era mailbox as used in the movie "Raggedy Man" with Sissy Spacek. The sign stuck in the mailbox informs that this is a prop, don't use it to send real mail.
Hmmmm...I don't remember the 50s color schemes, but I do remember what was around the corner near our house in the early 60s. The mail box was not the conventional 4-legged one...it was smaller, mounted on a concrete post, and painted red. In later years it was repainted blue, before it disappeared completely. The fire hydrant was red with white caps. The same intersection also had a fire department call box. A small red box mounted on a telephone pole.
When I was growing up, the hydrant on the corner was sort of silver-white with a green top. It was installed in 1959 when the tract was built. It stayed that color until 1976, when the girl that lived in the corner house painted it red, white, and blue. I believe it's still those colors, I'll have to look next time I go visit Mom. Otherwise, it seems I mostly see school-bus yellow.
Candy, the reference to Fire Alarm Call Boxes reminded me that we had them on almost every downtown street corner in our small town in the '50s. Just another added touch for your wonderful creation.....:tb-cool: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_alarm_box http://www.flickr.com/photos/odannyboy/273228015/
This has been fascinating!!! It has given me a lot of ideas. Thanks for all the interesting links and stories of your youth, and Hytec! Fire Alarm call boxes! Great idea ! Should be easy to make.
This is one of the few advantages of modelling British N!!! Over here, the mail boxes are all red. It doesn't matter whether it's on a post, on the sidewalk or set into a wall. The thing is red. Telephone kiosks used to be red as well, but they went to mainly a silver colour some years ago, and there are very few left anyway because most people have mobile phones (I think you call them cell phones). Incidentally, some in London are black! Our hydrants are not placed on the sidewalk like other bits of street furniture. They are buried, with a yellow flap to gain access. Also, the nearby kerb is usually painted yellow, and there is usually a yellow square (about six inches) with black lettering on a wall. This has a large H. There are figures above and below the crossbar of the H. One figure is the distance in feet to the hydrant and the other is its diameter in inches. I'm happy to say they've not yet changed to Metric! Regards, Pete Davies
That wouldn't work for us, Peter, because of all the snow we get. We want access to the hydrants. We want them sticking up above the snow which often is more then 15 inches deep here in New England. Candy
Growing up in the 70s and 80s, the Fire Hydrants in River Forest Illinois were always dark Evergreen Green. Some of them had white caps. Sadly, I don't ever remember Mailboxes being a color other than blue. Wait, except that's only true for customer use mailboxes. There were other mailboxes that didn't have customer access (never understood what they were for) that stood next to the blue ones. Those were dark Olive green.
The "green" boxes are storage bins for the walking route deliverers. If the route has a large quantity of mail to be delivered, mail for the latter part of the route can be stored in the box and picked up later after mail for the early part of the route has been delivered. Likewise, if there has been alot of outgoing mail, it also can be stored for later pickup as the deliverer heads back to the PO. The storage boxes are green so as not to be confused with public access boxes which, as you noted, are painted blue.
I worked as a mail carrier for a couple of summers when I was in college. The "Not For Deposit of Mail" boxes were there to support the foot carriers. Typically, the carriers would arrive at the Post Office at 6 AM and sort mail for their route until 9. At that time, they would bundle the mail into "hits" which would be bagged and given to the truck guys. The carrier would go out with his first batch of mail, and the truck would put the bags into the green boxes. When the carrier got to the box, there would be his next bundles of mail. Other than the occasional courtesy pickup at a house, the foot carriers didn't take mail back to the Post Office. That was part of the truck team's job.
