March 16–23, 2000

city beat

Lights Out

Vandals have decimated the millennium lights on the South Street bridge.

by Jennifer Rauch

Heralded as permanent fixtures of the city’s Year 2000 celebration, the twinkling lights over the Schuylkill River bridges were switched on with much pomp by outgoing mayor Ed Rendell on New Year’s Eve.

The $1.9 million project, funded by Peco Energy Co., the city and other sponsors, enhanced Philadelphia’s nighttime riverscape by illuminating all seven of the water crossings with unique lighting evocative of their surroundings.

But some of the lamps, the ones lining South Street, proved even more fleeting than millennial hysteria. The Streets Department last week removed what was left of the globes, which in recent weeks had been smashed by vandals.

"Every time we sent someone down to check them, a couple more were down, and a couple more," says Walter Vorse of the department’s street lighting division. "Finally, there were only three left out of 26. The rest were all hanging off by their wires, an electrical hazard."

The demise of the lights proved a mystery for bridge watchers. Vorse heard they had been taken out with a hockey stick. Center City resident Andrew Terhune thought it looked like they were used for target practice.

"It’s really depressing," says Terhune, who suggested putting up a reward to find the perpetrators. "They were only turned on two months ago and they’re already gone. It’s a quality-of-life issue. We should be able to put up public improvements and not worry about some wackos knocking them down."

The culprits, apparently, were bare-handed youth who simply shook the poles until the globes fell off.

"Someone saw a gang of kids doing it and called 911, but the police didn’t get there in time," says project designer Raymond Grenald, the Narberth-based lighting virtuoso who since the 1960s has illuminated Boathouse Row, the Convention Center, the Avenue of the Arts and other local and national monuments.

Because the South Street Bridge itself is in critical condition — the city plans to replace the bridge in 2003 — the lamps’ early expiration was anything but a surprise, according to Grenald. (Lighting at the six remaining spans at Spring Garden, Market, Chestnut and Walnut Streets, JFK Boulevard and the SEPTA line are all in perfect health.)

"We knew the lighting would be of a very temporary nature because the bridge is going to be demolished in a couple of years," says the former city architect. "We couldn’t mount the poles on the outside of the bridge, like the other ones were, because it’s in such rotten condition. I put my hand on the concrete and it just crumbled in my hand."

Thus, the posts were installed inside the railing, where they were all too accessible to pedestrians. Grenald says other factors sealed the lights’ fate: A manufacturing glitch made the top of the lamps about half their intended diameter, and electrical codes prohibited clamping the posts to the handrail for more stability.

"They just wobbled all over," says Grenald, noting that the lights will be replaced in time with more rigid ones that are more tightly bolted to the bridge and possibly the handrails, too.

The lighting designer is flattered that passersby admired the lamps enough to offer a reward for locating the vandals, but says punishment isn’t his priority.

"These were kids, not responsible adults," Grenald says. "I’m more interested in getting the lights working again. When you do something nice that people take pride in, they tend to protect those things, which delights me. That’s what a city should be."

Millennium Philadelphia director Amy Needle, whose nonprofit group has planned celebrations for July 4, 1999 through January 1, 2001, estimates the cost of the South Street fixtures at between $100,000 and $150,000, about the same as for the other bridges.

"The problem was more vandalism than any particular failure, but knowing what we know now, we’re creating a luminaire that’s a little less fragile," Needle says. "By the end of month we’ll have a solution and start putting that into effect on the bridge."