The city’s skyline is becoming a rainbow of dancing colors as more tall towers add programmable LEDs to their tops and antennas. What was once stagnant and mostly white or a primary color is now alive with tints and effects heretofore only seen on the Broadway stage.
Soon the nightly dance led by the Empire State Building will include the top of One World Trade Center, where the hues and swirling lights may be coordinated with those enlivening 4 Times Square and One Bryant Park — all owned in full or in part by the Durst Organization.
A spokesman for Durst declined to discuss their plans for turning on the spire lights at 1 WTC, but the company and co-owner, the Port Authority, have been testing them in the middle of some nights.
The Durst building LEDs are being programmed by Douglas Durst’s son-in-law Mark Domino, and can be controlled from his Android phone. “I’m very pleased with the spires on 4 Times Square and One Bryant Park,” said Durst last year.
Once 1 WTC’s 1,776-foot-high spire lights are added to the skyline, its nighttime silhouette will appear even taller than during the day, just as the Empire State Building’s full antenna lights make a dramatic difference, showing off its full height of 1,454 feet.
It wasn’t so long ago that the Empire’s three tiers of lights were changed by “a bunch of men changing gels,” and if a bulb burned out, there was a black void on the side of the building.
When owner Anthony Malkin, Chairman and CEO of the Empire State Realty Trust, traveled to Hong Kong and Shanghai nearly a decade ago, he recalled the “lights were truly amazing” even though he felt the skyline itself was not distinctive.
It took several years for the science to catch up with what Malkin had in mind for the Empire, which has been also going through an approximately $500 million energy-saving modernization program. “It was time really to raise our game and get things more exciting,” Malkin recalled. “We not only bought the lights, we bought the front end,” which is a lighting board similar to one used at concerts for stage lights.
That “anything” is now the Empire State Building. Brickman was first enlisted to create a simple program for Election Night in conjunction with CNN. The Empire’s top changed towards more blue or red depending on the vote tallies for Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. “People loved it,” Malkin said.
The next stop was New Year’s Eve 2013 when Brickman created a spectacular firework-like LED show set to Alicia Keys’ singing “Empire State of Mind,” which includes the chorus, “Bright lights will inspire you.” The music was coordinated with the lights and played simultaneously on iHeartRadio while the star made an appearance at the top of the building. (A YouTube video made from someone’s window in Hoboken went viral and has over 800,000 hits.)
“We do a dazzle effect for New Year’s Eve that is quite amazing,” Malkin said of what is becoming an annual skyline event.
Brickman has since programmed both a half-hour Halloween spooktacular with music synchronized on Clear Channel’s Z100 (100.3 FM) and KTU (103.5 FM) as well as four shorter light programs to Christmas music.
The antenna top was a flickering flame over a blue and white candle during Hanukkah, and it was turned into a swirling red and white candy cane for most of Christmas week.
“I was walking down the street on one of the nights before Christmas,” Malkin recalled. “The people in the street were cheering at something, and I turned and looked, and it was at my building. And they weren’t even listening to the music.”
Nevertheless, Malkin considers having the lights synched to music on the Clear Channel stations as “crucial.”
Malkin also confided the Empire State Building will have a “star role” during Super Bowl week next month, but declined to share more.
“I love working with Marc; he is so smart and fun,” Malkin added. “The shows are getting better and we are getting better and better at doing them. For me, the skyline of New York is becoming more alive and we have caused everybody else to step up their game.”
Dear Durst Organization: It’s time to bring it on.