Consolidated Edison Building Tower of Light
- Details
4 Irving Place
New York
NY
USA 10003
Warren & Wetmore, architects
Atop the 24-story, 425-foot Con Ed building is a colossal, 38-foot-tall bronze and glass lantern dedicated to the Con Ed employees killed in World War I.
Airport or air field
Brick
1926
1929
Consolidated Edison Company
Corporate
building designated a City landmark (2009)
Con Ed Emplyees who died in WWI
Dubbed the “Tower of Light” in corporate literature, the tower was intended to be both a symbol of one of the nation’s leading producers of power and light and a memorial to the company’s employees who had died in World War I and incorporates numerous devices in its decorative program such as torches and burning urns appropriate for a building associated with lighting and with funereal monuments. These dual purposes were also served by an elaborate program of nighttime illumination, inaugurated in July 1929. Although the lighting has been updated to reflect modern technology, the tower continues to be illuminated at night and remains in the words of the New York Times one of the “crowns of light [that] grace the skyline” and a symbol of Consolidated Edison, Inc. (source: http://www.unionsquarecommunitycoalition.org/landmarking/coned.html)
Con Ed
