1 Vanderbilts lighting is pretty good.
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The crown above the observation deck is well lit. I’m thinking more about the two mech floors between the office floors and the Summit part
Like someone said last night: ESB, Chrysler and One Vanderbilt are definitely the most maintained along with Hudson Yards. The lights at the World Trade Center has been funky since a few years after the opening of One and Four WTC. Luckily throughout that time Woolworth got restored with a lovely crown and lighting, but I was just watching Dronalist’s videos and even the lights for CPT look messy right now. Some lights are stable, and a lot of them keep fading on and off (but I think thats testing since I’ve seen something like that on the W in Philly).
But even here in Philly the lights are not well maintained. Comcast Technology Center’s lantern has some pixels off, Comcast Center crown keeps glitching with sections flickering or turning off, some pieces don’t look completely restored on One Liberty Place and the spire lights are off (but still looks fantastic), 2 Liberty’s lights havent been restored in over 10 years, bulbs are going out on BNY Mellon Center including under the roof, sections of FMC lights are off, few sections of lighting are off on Three Logan Square, Independence Blue Cross Tower decorative lighting has been turned off since 2004, and even the W/Element lights are still not complete as you can see unlit strips.
If I were the manager I woukd make sure to improve all of this as much as possible, lighting is key for any night time skyline, and architects make it pop for a reason. I would love to see vibrant lights shine all across the skyline with no problems in sight
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The FAA red lights on 3 WTC always blinked and are in working order. I don’t even think 3WTC has crown lights, to begin with. That building’s entire nighttime lighting is a massive flop in general, especially since you really can’t see it because the interior lights render it invisible.
The lighting’s always broken clearly due to mismanagement and neglect of the site. The owners don’t seem to treat these buildings with the respect they deserve and as a result, features on these buildings are always looking terrible or are broken.
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You’re right that 3 WTC doesn’t have crown lighting, only the diagrid is lit up, but one can only really appreciate it from a closer view where they actually look very nice more than far away (as you said the interior lights just interfere with it at that point).
As for One Vanderbilt, I think the 2 mech levels below the Observation Deck levels only recently began to start testing lighting to make it not appear as a random dark band, so I’d give that some time.
It’s hard to say for sure what the main problem is across all the cases because they may differ from building to building, there’s a lot of mechanics/wiring that go into these lighting schemes, so when something goes out (even though everything is most likely connected to a computer system) it’s hard to find where the issue is, LED’s have their faults too. And due to their not always easily accessible locations, repairing them becomes difficult. But one could also judge lighting on camera/capture quality, camera settings/quality can capture lighting at night better than others.
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Hah, I completely forgot it was even lit up at one point, which tells you how poorly it was setup because it was very dismissible and I barely even noticed it looking at photo’s I’ve taken at night. They should’ve come up with another way to light up the parapet.
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That’s some really pathetic crown lighting. I’ve visited this site at night and it’s barely noticeable in person. They really should consider lighting up the mechanical spaces as they do on 1WTC.
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I would have loved for the beacon to look like the one at the top of the Eiffel Tower.
What we got is yeesh
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@ALC11 They can’t really do that in 3 WTC’s case because unlike 1 WTC’s upper mechanical floors, which are vision glass windows that can be back lit, the upper mechanical floors on 3 WTC are similar to the windows on the parapet of 4 WTC, they are like spandrel glass and have a backing behind the glass that would prevent backlighting from coming through.
@baronson That would’ve been really cool, but literally impossible since the lights on the Eiffel Tower are fairly large (they are literal search lights) and there are multiple of them. The beacon housing pod on 1 WTC isn’t that big, but I think the LED array system they were able to make in the small space is pretty cool, it’s just a pity it isn’t being used anymore because it looked cool seeing it “spin”.
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I always thought it was good to see, since the mexhanical levels aren’t lit up like previously rendered. But now the lights are off…why
From the Hudson cam.
The mast is back on. Looking pretty bright when viewing the live cam too. The lights on the top of 3 WTC are also back on.
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Looks like 4 WTC’s top light is broken again. It was on for like one day and it broke again.
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The deal is a victory for the 104-story skyscraper as it faced an uncertain future after Condé Nast put much of its 1.2 million square feet on the sublease market last year and refused to pay $2.4 million in rent to its landlords — though the publishing giant finally ponied up the cash in August 2021.
Since 2019, Condé Nast has slowly chipped away at its footprint at the tower, renting out at least 185,000 square feet to Ennead Architects, Ambac Financial Group, tech-focused marketing company Constellation Agency and social networking site Reddit. Condé Nast’s latest sublease brings the building to 95 percent leased, according to a representative from Durst.
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Sometimes these writers live in a different universe. What uncertain future? The building is almost entirely leased, and Condé Nast was always going to have to cough up the money.
Conde must have the worst legal counsel in the world to think they could just decide to break their decades-long lease because they felt like it. They were not insolvent, and had absolutely no legal grounds for nonpayment except that they chose they didn’t need the space anymore. Should’ve thought about that before signing a 20 year lease.
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It looks so good now that they actually clean it regularly
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It looks so much better now. It was very impressed with it.
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