[NYguy]

The trash talking of the lighting begins. Who will own the night?


http://www.capitalnewyork.com/articl...ght?news-image

Winning the night

By Dana Rubinstein
Feb. 24, 2014

“Let’s be clear,” said Anthony Malkin, the chairman, president and C.E.O. of the publicly traded company that owns New York’s most famous skyscraper. “The Empire State Building has always been the progenitor and leader in any number of different things.”

He was talking about computer controlled, vibrantly-colored L.E.D. tower lights, and how since 2012 he has had some 1,200 of them on top of his skyscraper.

“The L.E.D. lights have so radically changed the game that it already has brought many other landlords and companies to change the lighting at the tops of their buildings,” he said.

As far as I can tell, there’s no entity out there that keeps track of how many skyscrapers have swapped out white incandescent tower lights for their more versatile, efficient counterparts (even the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat was at a loss).

But aside from the Empire State Building, New York City has at least four others with L.E.D. lights capable of brightening the night skyline with countless color combinations: the old Helmsley Building at 230 Park Avenue; 4 Times Square; One Bryant Park; and in a recent addition, 1 World Trade Center.

“We put them on One Bryant Park and Four Times Square way before Tony [Malkin] even thought of L.E.D. lights,” said developer Douglas Durst, whose Durst Organization owns those two buildings and co-owns 1 World Trade Center, adding: “Whatever Tony can do we can do better.”

In 2010, Durst put elegant sprays of L.E.D. lights along the trestle spires of 4 Times Square and One Bryant Park. And this year, 1 World Trade Center, which the Durst Organization co-owns with the Port Authority, got into the L.E.D. game too. In advance of the Super Bowl, its spire was lit orange and green in honor of the Broncos and the Seahawks, and then green in honor of the winning team.

The tradition of putting blazing lights on top of skyscrapers goes back to at least 1890, when Joseph Pulitzer built a headquarters for his New York World newspaper on Park Row near City Hall. It was called, aptly, the World Building, and at the time, it was the world’s tallest, topping out at more than 300 feet.

On a clear night, ships at sea could spot the small electric lights illuminating the World Building’s golden cupola, according to Carol Willis, the founder and director of the Skyscraper Museum.

The Empire State Building first got colored incandescent lights—red, white and blue lights achieved by manually putting filters on top of white lights—in 1976, in honor of the bicentennial.

wners of the Empire State Building have since made it their business to light the tower in honor of Australia Day and Nelson Mandela, World Diabetes Day and Communist China’s 60th Anniversary. But not, oddly, in honor of Mother Teresa, which at the time earned Malkin reams of bad press.

“We try and avoid getting into the box that Tony keeps getting himself into,” said Durst.

What does that mean?

“I was referring to his fight over Mother Teresa.”

How will he avoid that?

“We’re going to light it for Mother Teresa,” he said laughing, referring to 1 World Trade.

Actually, Durst hasn’t yet figured out what he wants to do with any of his L.E.D. lights, aside from the occasional honorific. Though he says his skyscrapers are capable of choreographing light shows to live performances of Alicia Keys, like Malkin did in 2012, he “doesn’t find it interesting.”

“We’ll leave that to Tony,” he said.

Not that Malkin is not concerned.

“I feel very comfortable and confident that they are the most extraordinary lights in the most extraordinary city in the world,” said Malkin of his own atop the Empire State. “And I think the only thing that even comes close are the lights on the Eiffel Tower. But frankly they’re in Paris, they’re not in New York City.”