Architecture of the Night

To us this will always be known as the NiMo Building. The tower of the art deco building, designed by King and King 82 years ago, is changing according to seasons and holidays, and the colors are brilliant.

Niagara Mohawk was sold to another power company a decade ago. National Grid continues the building's outstanding nighttime light show. At Valentine's Day it is red; for St. Paddy's it will be green; earlier during the SU basketball season it is orange and blue; at Christmas it is red.

[In 1999] Howard Brandston led the effort to bring light back to the Syracuse night. He also had worked with the relighting of the Statue of Liberty and the lighting scheme of Malaysia's Petronas Towers, the tallest buildings in the world.

Brandston considered the intent of the original designers and added modern technology, complete with 894 fluorescent lamps, 659 incandescent lamps, 110 metal halide lamps and 2,010 feet of blue, green, red and white neon lighting.

Dietrich Neumann works as an architecture professor at Brown University in Providence, R.I. He is an internationally recognized authority on exterior lighting and specializes in buildings created during the Art Deco era. "The NiMo Building," Neumann says from his office at Brown, "is a great example of what is called the architecture of the night."

A larger article from the Syracuse Newspapers tells the longer story here. 

King + King's website is here.