This is the second of two lighting-themed articles about indulging in the magic of colorful, twinkling lights at Christmastime. As a generic term, holiday lights refers to various electrical lighting extravaganzas. But light displays during a year’s final weeks originate with celebrating Christmas with commercial displays.
Festive lighting after Thanksgiving is an American custom. Festivals of light became a widespread community and civic practice following the 1990s, when businesses started commercializing lighting, such as Christmas tree lighting on top of American skyscrapers, for the holidays.
In this story, architecture—a bridge, a railroad heir’s house, a 10-story department store, a 70-story skyscraper in the middle of Manhattan, an archway on the mighty Mississippi River—gets showcased with electrical lights. It happens but once a year. Behold the season’s joy in lights.
Table of Contents:
- New York City, NY
- Anchorage, AK
- San Fransisco, CA
- Denver, CO
- St. Louis, MO
- Miami, FL
- Seattle, WA
- San Antonio, TX
- Buffalo, NY / Ontario, Canada
- Charleston, SC
New York City, NY
Cartier in Christmas Lights
Cartier’s Manhattan store on Fifth Avenue is its largest in the world. This flagship four-story store, a building for which Pierre Cartier traded a pearl necklace in 1917, occupies the corner of Fifth and 52nd street, showcasing Cartier’s luxury merchandise of watches, jewelry, fragrances and accessories.
Designed in 1904, the neo-Renaissance style mansion—shoppers can take a virtual tour inside—was favored by Grace Kelly, Andy Warhol and Elizabeth Taylor. Restored in 2014, the legendary Cartier building, acquired by Pierre Cartier when he traded the piece of neck jewelry valued at $1 million, is wrapped in electrical lights resembling the brand’s signature red bow. The store, originally an Industrial Revolution-era home built for the child of railroad tycoon Henry Plant, is sheathed in the shiny red ribbon and trimmed with garland outlining every ground-floor window. The decor remains until Christmas.
Visit Cartier at 651-653 Fifth Avenue and 4 East 52nd Street, close to Rockefeller Center.
Rockefeller Center
In December of 1931, people working at New York City’s Rockefeller Center—a 70-story skyscraper named for the son and namesake of Standard Oil Company founder John D. Rockefeller—chose to pool their money to buy a Christmas tree. As the skyscraper’s official website says, “[t]he men decorated the 20-foot high balsam fir with handmade garlands made by their families.” Within a couple of years, Rockefeller Center made the Christmas tree an annual tradition, making the first Christmas tree lighting public in 1933.
In 2004, the Swarovski company’s 9.5 feet-diameter, 550-pound star featuring 25,000 crystals, topped Rockefeller Center’s tree. The following year, LED lighting was added, making the star “look as if it were radiating light from its core to its tips.”
Today, NBC’s Today Show co-anchors Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb and Craig Melvin as well as Access Hollywood‘s Mario Lopez co-host a TV show in which viewers watch holiday-themed performances. This year, Gwen Stefani and Blake Shelton performed their duet single, “You Make It Feel Like Christmas” and there were performances by Andrea Bocelli, Alicia Keys, the Muppets, the Shindellas and Louis York. Architecturally, the Art Deco styled Rockefeller Center features three floors of observation decks with unobstructed views of New York City’s legendary skyline. These exterior and interior areas face every direction.
If you can’t visit the center yourself, there is a livesteam of the Christmas Tree available anytime.
Saks Fifth Avenue’s Light Show
Besides its wintry window displays, dressing and decorations, Saks Fifth Avenue sponsors an annual, holiday-themed light show. The three-minute, 23-second light show, which repeats every 10 minutes from 5 pm to 11 pm, rates among the most cherished Christmas lights in New York City.
Sidewalks near Saks Fifth Avenue tend to get crowded. This 10-story building, featuring everything from home goods to fashion designer clothing, is the company’s flagship store and one of the original Saks Fifth Avenue stores. Saks Fifth Avenue designers include Prada, Gucci and Versace.
You can watch a replay of the live video feed of Saks’ Christmas light show this year.
The Chrysler Building and Seagram Building
Two of New York City’s architectural landmarks—the Seagram Building and the Chrysler Building—owned by the same private company—feature simple, lighted public Christmas themes.
A visit to Manhattan’s Art Deco style Chrysler Building can be a reward by itself. Initially owned by the Chrysler family, who sold the building and moved Chrysler Corporation out in 1953, it’s now owned by Aby Rosen’s New York-based real estate company RFR Holding, which bought the historic skyscraper in 2019. Rosen, who purchased the property for $150 million, is developing the Chrysler Building as a hotel.
When the Chrysler Building opened, it featured a public observation deck on the 71st floor at a height of 783 feet. The deck was converted into office space in 1945. But a new observation deck is reportedly in the works. The Chrysler Building, designed by New York architect William Van Alen, features a facade in white brick mixed with dark gray bricks in window rows. The skyscraper, with 3,862 windows, was created by automotive businessman Walter Chrysler, founder of Chrysler Corporation, who bought the property from a Coney Island developer for $2 million. Chrysler hired Van Alen to create the world’s tallest building. Construction commenced in 1929, finishing in 1930 and topping out at 1,048 feet, including the 125-foot steel spire, surpassing the Woolworth Building to become the tallest building in the world, which the Chrysler Building was until until 1931.
Rosen’s real estate company also owns Manhattan’s Seagram skyscraper, designed by modern architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and completed in 1958. The Seagram Building’s plaza is open to the public. Every year, the plaza fountain is filled during the holidays with a forest of aromatic Balsam fir pine trees. In recent years, the trees are draped with Christmas lights. Sometimes, they’re merely powdered with snow.
In any case, the Seagram Building greets New York pedestrians walking toward Park Avenue along 52nd or 53rd streets with open space. The Seagram—a family name for the Joseph Seagram alcohol company—skyscraper is set back about 100 feet from Park Avenue’s bustling sidewalk and raised on a platform where there’s a plaza. The forest of Christmas trees fills the empty plaza.
Anchorage, AK
Downtown Anchorage’s Town Square replaced city gardens in 1984. In 1997, electrical outlets were installed to light every tree in the downtown park for its City of Lights debut. During wintertime, the trees are laced with Christmas lights and an ice skating rink is created in the center of the park. The result is a burst of lighting in the center of of Alaska’s biggest city (nearly 40 percent of the state’s population lives there).
Of course, from the middle of August to the middle of April, one can watch Alaska’s aurora known as the northern lights. Clouds may cover the famous natural lights and the northern lights may simply not appear in a given area. However, there are ways to increase the chance of seeing the aurora; Alaska officials recommend scheduling five to seven days with at least three nights for looking for the lights, which they say gives visitors a 90 percent chance of seeing the northern lights.
San Francisco, CA
The Transamerica Building
San Francisco’s Transamerica Building, designed by architect William Pereira, features a 32-pane glass encasement at the top of the skyscraper, also known as the Transamerica Pyramid. Pereira called this glass encasement the tower’s crown jewel. According to the building’s website, a light inside the glass shines at 6,000 watts, approximately 100 times brighter than a standard incandescent light bulb.
At Christmastime, the beacon—the highest point in one of San Francisco’s tallest buildings, which is closed to the public—is often, though not always, lighted. Whether the beacon of light goes on is at the discretion of the skyscraper’s private property owner. A building official once told the press that the singular light turns on for certain occasions “or when the 49ers win championship games.” It’s recently been visible on Christmas, New Year’s Eve, America’s Independence Day—July 4th—and on the date which marks the 2001 terrorist attack on the United States, September 11. In some instances, the light’s been turned and left on to glow for several days.
“There’s nothing to say we will absolutely light it at any time,” a Transamerica Building representative told the media in 2010. The mysterious light and its glass encasement, like the skyscraper, are closed to the public for privacy and security.
Denver, CO
The Mile High City’s Camp Christmas
Downtown Denver in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains illuminates its downtown architecture—including what the city calls a Bridge of Lights—during December. Self-described maximalist artist Lonnie Hanzon’s Camp Christmas forewarns that his work is “not for the faint of festivity.”
The Denver Center for the Performing Arts calls Camp Christmas a “fantastical wonderland of lights, dazzling decorations, music and memorabilia as you explore mesmerizing yuletide scenes spread across a six-acre landscape.”
“Most importantly,” the performing arts center promises, “Camp Christmas is an opportunity to rediscover (and reimagine!) the holiday spirit and connect with people you love.” Camp Christmas can be experienced at the Heritage Lakewood Belmar Park in Lakewood:.
Denver Holiday Lights & Sights Tour
From now through New Year’s Day, downtown Denver offers a two-hour holiday lights walking tour. Indulge in Denver’s history, architecture and holiday lights at night during this limited-run lighting experience, which organizers pledge is designed to afford views and photo opportunities of “Denver’s most beautiful and famous landmarks, magnificently lit up for this cheery time of year. Besides getting the inside scoop on the famous and incredibly lit-up sights, you’ll hear about holiday traditions that got their start right here in Denver.”
Bridge of Lights (with hot cocoa and Christmas cookies)
Drive across the Royal Gorge Bridge in Cañon City through December 31, 2022 (excluding Christmas) and you’ll experience suspended Christmas lighting a thousand feet above the Arkansas River. The bridge, not regularly offered outside of pre-arranged car club groups, is decorated in thousands of holiday lights. Guests can buy hot cocoa, coffee or cider in a Bridge of Lights souvenir cup and Christmas cookies to taste while driving through the light display.
St. Louis, MO
Winterfest at the Arch
Scheduled to run through New Year’s Day, Winterfest returns in Kiener Plaza at the Gateway Arch park in St. Louis, Missouri. Enjoy ice skating, s’mores and heated igloos underneath 70,000 twinkling lights in the shadow of the metallic Gateway Arch. The arch, designed by a world-famous architect to commemorate America’s Westward expansion, is the focal point of the park and holiday light festival, which features a second annual Winterfest 5K, the only route through the Arch’s park. Winterfest also includes St. Louis Blues-sponsored 3-on-3 hockey tournaments and a hockey lesson, visits from princesses and superheroes, and a family-friendly New Year’s Eve fireworks show.
A Winterfest cafe showcases culinary work by Chef Juwan Rice of JR’s Gourmet and a new menu of handcrafted pastries with varied flavors of hot cocoa. Tickets for skate rentals, heated igloos and s’mores are on sale now. Winterfest is part of a goal to revive downtown St. Louis with safe, affordable, innovative and family-friendly events “to make new memories under the Arch”.
Miami, FL
Charles Deering’s estate
American industrialist Charles Deering’s historic waterfront home in Florida’s Everglades becomes more beautiful during the holidays. It’s decorated as an illuminated wonderland, celebrating the Deering estate’s centenary by taking visitors back to the glamor of the early 20th century with nods to the jazz era and golden age of movies. The Richmond Cottage dining room is set in the fashion of a celebratory dinner to ring the holiday season as it could have been during Mr. Deering’s residence, while the Stone House Library evokes the splendor of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
Seattle, WA
Space Needle
Seattle’s Space Needle commenced the holidays by illuminating all 1,200 LED lights on its rooftop Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving. Located 560’ above ground, Seattle’s most visible tree will remain atop the sky tower through New Year’s Day. This year, St. Nick returns to the holiday-decorated Space Needle, appearing until Christmas Eve. Visitors can ride to the top of Seattle, Washington’s grand and futuristic Space Needle and step into the world’s first and only revolving glass floor to meet Santa Claus in an all-glass sleigh. Professional photographers capture the moment as Santa’s elves set you up for the ultimate holiday picture. All guests receive a free digital photo with Santa, included with every visit.
San Antonio, TX
The Alamo
Few architectural landmarks have the power of the Alamo, which lights up at Christmastime. Celebrating the holidays at the Alamo means touring this sacred, historical site while taking in the festive lights illuminating the Alamo’s gardens, and, of course, seeing the Christmas tree at Alamo Plaza. In addition to the Alamo’s majestic trees wrapped with breathtaking lights this holiday season, the Alamo gardens feature larger-than-life light-decorated figures of the Alamo’s heroic defenders, including William Travis, Davy Crockett and the others. This year’s Alamo lights are made possible by sponsorships from CPS Energy, Edouard Foundation, and Silver Eagle Beverages.
Buffalo, NY / Ontario, Canada
Niagara Falls
Behold three million lights at Niagara Falls at the Winter Festival of Lights, Canada’s largest free outdoor light festival. These electrical light displays are draped along the Niagara Parkway, from Queen Victoria Park through Dufferin Islands and across Niagara Falls—marking this year’s festival theme of energy along a five-mile route filled with dazzling lights and interactive displays. Whether by car or on foot, the wide open spaces and trails let you bundle up and keep your distance while enjoying the exhibits. Visit locations at Niagara Parks for lighting exhibits, part of the Winter Festival of Lights—Niagara Parks Power Station—and, new this year, the Sandie Bellows Plaza in front of the Niagara Parks Power Station for festive photo opportunities. Currents: Niagara’s Power Transformed includes a sound and light show inside the electrical power station.
Charleston, SC
Festival of Lights
Charleston, South Carolina’s Holiday Festival of Lights returns to James Island County Park for a 33rd year. Shimmering with an estimated two million lights, Charleston’s holiday event is open for nightly admission with the Festival of Lights as a three-mile driving tour. The festival includes a sculpture made from 50 tons of sand, a holiday train, an enchanted walking trail, Victorian-era carousel, Santa’s sweet shop, gift shops, marshmallow roasting, and concessions with hamburgers, kettle corn, hot chocolate and more.
