{"id":1632,"date":"2011-12-21T21:10:44","date_gmt":"2011-12-22T02:10:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/phillyhistory.wpengine.com\/?p=1632"},"modified":"2011-12-21T21:55:54","modified_gmt":"2011-12-22T02:55:54","slug":"silent-night-weird-night-and-a-game-of-landmark-laser-tag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/2011\/12\/silent-night-weird-night-and-a-game-of-landmark-laser-tag\/","title":{"rendered":"Silent Night, Weird Night and a Game of Landmark Laser Tag"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nChristmas at City Hall, December 7, 2005. Photograph by Dick Gouldey.<\/span><\/div>\n

As far as Walt Whitman was concerned, light did right by Philadelphia City Hall. Encountering the building\u2019s unfinished \u201cmagnificent proportions\u201d one evening, Whitman wrote of<\/a> \u201ca majestic and lovely show there in the moonlight\u2014flooded all over, fa\u00e7ades, myriad silver-white lines and carv\u2019d heads and mouldings, with the soft dazzle\u2014silent, weird, beautiful\u2026\u201d Foreshadowing Andy Warhol\u2019s quip about fleeting fame, Whitman added: \u201cI know that never when finish\u2019d will that magnificent pile impress one as it impress\u2019d me those fifteen minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n

We can only guess if Whitman would have been as impressed by the theatrical holiday lighting of City Hall\u2019s portals in 2005. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer<\/em><\/a>, architectural historian George Thomas recalled Whitman and critiqued the project as “less silent and more weird.” Reporter Amy Rosenberg wondered: \u201cIs it art deco or Victorian? Did the Mummers have something to do with it?\u201d Could it have been \u201csomething out of Disney? \u2026 People who come to see it often don’t know what to make of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

City photographer Dick Gouldey captured the special effects on both east portal (illustrated) and west portal (seen here<\/a>) in versions of the four, rotating lighting schemes<\/a> that challenged traditional expectations. Covering all bases, the City also put up a traditional evergreen and strung it with lights. Gouldey photographed that<\/a><\/em>, too.<\/p>\n

Six years have come and gone and we’ve not heard calls for more of this brand of landmark lighting. If anything, the public memory of this $300,000 production mounted by the Center City District is fading to black. Blame a preference for traditionalism; blame the recession\u2014we\u2019ve never seen anything like it since. And that seems to be OK.<\/p>\n

Not that we haven\u2019t used theatrical lighting on historical buildings. For decades, city planner Ed Bacon had promoted the idea of developing such a project to create sets for public performances. In the 1990s, that idea morphed into Lights of Liberty<\/a> which has become part of Philly\u2019s repertoire to help tell the story of 1776.<\/p>\n

By contrast, the City Hall portal project seemed to be light for light\u2019s sake. Its designers borrowed from the most advanced theater lighting techniques and digital photography, but other than the technology itself, the finished work shared no story; it offered no narrative.<\/p>\n

The public’s apparent lack of enthusiasm for the 2005 project begs the question: Can a state-of-the-art \u201cfusion of theatre, artistic programming, theatrical design and lighting,\u201d devoid of narrative also be successful? Or does the public need more than a heady collaboration of international creatives (Artlumiere<\/a> and Casa Magica) and their \u201cextraordinary new form of expression,\u201d even if they deliver on their promise of visibility “along the entire length of Market Street\u201d? There’s more to success than visibility.<\/p>\n

The very same special effects had been used \u201cto create a destination and a sense of place\u201d at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, an Apple Computer store in Paris, and other sites around the world. But Philadelphia’s formula for success is more demanding, more complex. Philadelphia already has<\/em> a sense of place. What folks here want is fireworks and <\/em>freedom, the spark and<\/em> the story. Otherwise, the special effects might be impressive, but they’ll amount to little more than an expensive game of landmark laser tag.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christmas at City Hall, December 7, 2005. Photograph by Dick Gouldey. As far as Walt Whitman was concerned, light did right by Philadelphia City Hall. Encountering the building\u2019s unfinished \u201cmagnificent proportions\u201d one evening, Whitman wrote of \u201ca majestic and lovely show there in the moonlight\u2014flooded all over, fa\u00e7ades, myriad silver-white lines and carv\u2019d heads and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.phillyhistory.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}