The first thing you notice about the PECO Building, at night at least, is the enormous lighted message board at the top: the Crown Lights, as Peco likes to call them.
More than two million LEDs flash out moving messages. Time, temperature and news are the regular programming, but PECO also uses the display to publicize community events and run messages for community organizations. The messages have to have a “community benefit” and “conform to corporate standards of appropriateness and good taste.”
The company won’t flash marriage proposals, birthdays or other personal messages. And presumably nothing like “please lower my electric bill.”
The company won’t flash marriage proposals, birthdays or other personal messages. And presumably nothing like “please lower my electric bill.”
The display has also dabbled in high culture. PECO’s Art in the Air features digital art designed by local artists. PECO works with the University City Science Center to pick the art.
The Crown Lights top off a 380-foot high, 25-story, sleek, black and glass, International-style building. It's just off the Schuylkill River at 2301 Market St. It’s been the headquarters of the headquarters of PECO, the Philadelphia Electric Company, since 1970.
The historic Philadelphia architects Architects Harbeson, Hough, Livingston & Larson, now H2L2, designed the building. The firm was founded in 1907 by Paul Philippe Cret. It’s designed a lot of Philadelphia landmarks like the Ben Franklin and Walt Whitman Bridges and the Rodin Museum.
PECO added the lighted display just in time for Philadelphia's bicentennial celebration. It fired up on the Fourth of July, 1976.
Back then it used incandescent lights. That changed in 2009. Peco hired a company called Eastern Sign Tech to replace the old incandescent with a more energy efficient (and colorful) LED system.
The LEDs are mounted on 118 vertical columns, each nearly 120 feet tall. Hoisting them to the top of the building, then maneuvering them into position took four months and the company had to build custom hoists and rigs to get it done.
