We all have our memories of the street lighting we grew up with, we all have our favourite lamps and lanterns, ……….but do you have a favourite column style?
Now I know this won’t be easy to answer, as a bit of research is needed, as their not as easy to identify as lanterns are!
When I was growing up, nearly every single column in our town was concrete, and there was two specific types that dominated, these were Concrete Utilities ‘Estate Minor’ with the Arc 3D bracket, and their Avenue 2D, with the Arc 2D bracket, both were cool looking columns, but my favourite isn’t either of them!
Another concrete column we had was made by Stanton, (I forget the model name of the more common one), but we had 3 gems of Stantons, yes only 3 in our entire town!, and these were Stantons model ‘7A’ swan neck 

Their were 2 either side of the canal bridge that I passed every day on my way to school, (I use to affectionately call the sisters)! 
There’s something graceful about concrete swan necks!, and the fact we only had 3 made them even more special!
Here’s the details of the 7A, courtesy of Simon Cornwell’s excellent site, ‘Street Lighting | UK 
http://www.simoncornwell.com/lighting/manufact/stanton/cat/cat1948-1/s7a.htm

It has to be concrete columns, but sadly not that delightful swan neck type. We had 80W mercury post-top lanterns on concrete columns outside my mother's house for well over 35 years, then one day they just got replaced with YKW 

The worst of it was they kept the old concrete columns but sleeved them in this awful aluminium stuff or whatever it was with the L*D's attached. I always think sleeving an old column like that is worse than replacing it altogether, but that's what they did 

Yeah definitely concrete!, they stood the test of time, considering some of the original ones dated back to the 30s!
Modern columns are boring today, tubular steel with no decorative shapes or brackets!
I found a picture of our 3rd 7A the other day with its original mercury lantern on! 
The 3rd one was situated outside one of my friends house near our town bridge  , happy memories, sadly all 3 are gone now, not because of YKW, but just their age, bits had started to crumble off them 

Here in Cerritos, I grew up around SCE owned Marbelite octagonal poles with short upsweep arms, paired with GE M-250R1s that were 70W HPS in the residential areas. When spot replacements were done, GE M-250R2s were a popular choice. In other neighborhoods, Westinghouse OV-15 Tudors or OV-15 4th gens were used. If you’re lucky, you might have had a Crouse-Hinds OVS or boring AEL 113.

If a pole were to get knocked out, new Ameron “Marbelite” copies were used which had the same specs as the original poles. On some occasions, the contractor hired by SCE tends to get lazy and will install a full sized arterial standard in residential areas paired with GE M-250R2 FCOs, which stick out like a sore thumb. Nowadays everything is now LED, GE ERL1s with intolerable glare now penetrate your bedroom window, yay.

Cool  , they sound like a classic old style US column, I’m guessing you guys are also swamped with the new boring tubular steel posts today though?

In my area, the most common poles are round concrete poles, typically made by Stress-Crete or USI, between 25-30ft tall. They would typically be paired with a 8 foot tapered elliptical arm. They've been pretty much the standard pole installed in suburban areas since the 1970s. These are still very commonly installed.

There are some places with older 1950s era square Stress-Crete poles, typically paired with a 8 foot braced S arm and a gumball. There were some that once used clamshells but those are all retrofitted to use a newer tapered elliptical arm and cobraheads. A now rare variant used a 8 foot double guy instead of the braced S arm. 

Traffic signal poles were usually either octagonal galvanized steel poles made by Powco, SSW, or PoleFab. or round sectional galvanized steel poles made by Polefab. The original mast arm for the signals were a upsweep or a double guy style signal arm. Those have been replaced with single member arms on all newer poles. This style has been used since the late 60s here.

Freeway lights were traditionally installed on 50 foot concrete poles with 6 foot truss arms. This was later switched to octagonal galvanized steel poles using the same truss arms. Later on the arms were switched with 8 foot tapered elliptical arms on the same steel poles. Starting in the late 80s, highmast poles started replacing many of the lower 50 foot cobrahead poles and today those represent most freeway installs.

Less common, and used on a few streets and two freeways are the aluminum Sylvania-Powerlite poles that were paired with a davit arm. These were originally designed to be used with Powerlite 4-6ft PG17 fluorescent street luminaires but later on Philips SOX 180 luminaires and HPS cobraheads have been retrofitted onto these poles. The originals had a distinctive upward angle at the tenon for the fluorescents. Newer poles installed as spot replacements usually had horizontal tenons. Occasionally a concrete pole with a tapered elliptical arm will be used to spot replace a pole. 

Cool  , they sound like a classic old style US column, I’m guessing you guys are also swamped with the new boring tubular steel posts today though?

Thankfully, concrete here is still popular for new installations, at least in my part of California.

No concrete for new installations here any more, sadly 

Growing up I don't remember concrete columns, though they were probably about.

I do remember the ones with top entry Beta 5 lanterns we saw in Chester though.

Concrete poles were not really too common where I live, as the only city that used them out here was Sunnyvale, there might have also been a few dotted around a few neighboring cities.

Now my favorite poles might be the older Union Metal octagon poles with semi ornate bases, concrete would come in second, mainly because it looks better than the plain round steel/aluminum poles that are used in most cities around me. As for arms, the mains ones I like are the double-guyed arms and truss arms, there is another style that I like but don't know what it's called, but it's an older style that's vaguely S shaped.

It’s interesting reading these and learning how different each countries columns were, and the different ones used in certain areas of a country!
In Cheshire they were mostly concrete, (I’ve also seen fibreglass ones just up the road from our town in the 80s), but if you move northwards from Cheshire to say, Yorkshire, then you start discovering the cast iron ones, some still in use today! 

I can't remember seeing any cast iron columns, but up until a few years ago I hadn't been bitten by the lighting bug.

I’ve looked through old pictures of our town, from the 1920s, and we did have cast iron columns with gas lanterns on!  , but sadly they were all gone when I entered the world!, we had loads of quaint poles mounted lanterns too until the change over.

Where I lived in Düsseldorf the street lighting was gas, but I don't have any pictures of it unfortunately.