Tuesday,

January 27, 1998

Volume 44, Number 19

Lighting the Outdoors

Right:

The School of Dental Medicine's historic Evans building at 40th Street and Spruce, named for the celebrated American dentist to the royal courts of Europe who left his fortune to the School. Aside from his advanced skills in dentistry, Dr. Evans was famous for helping the Empress Eugenie escape to England when the Paris mob overthrew Napoleon III. Some of the jewels she gave Dr. Evans were auctioned in 1983 to benefit the School.

The Campus Lighting Project is Moving into Phase III

The name is deceptively simple--The Lighting Project. But the goals are part safety, part historical preservation, and thus have involved a combination of skills and specializations as carried out in Phase I and Phase II under the leadership of Anne Froehling of Facilities Design and Charles Boyle of Physical Plant.

Initially announced as a six-part project, the program has been condensed to four phases, and is now heading into Phase III under the direction of Dominick Fantozzi of Project Management.

The first two phases are essentially complete, pending final sign-off from PECO, said Titus Hewryk of Facilities Design.

Phase I encompassed the areas from 38th Street westward, now called Hamilton Village, while Phase II took in the eastern section, including Franklin Field and the University Museum. (Major new construction projects, such as the Perelman Quad and Sansom Common, and the forthcoming Wharton School expansion, have lighting as an integral part of their schedules, while what is called The Lighting Project deals with buildings that are not otherwise under construction.)

The main thing a visitor will see in, say, Superblock, is that taller light poles with better spacing create more even coverage-the safety factor exemplified. But when the architecture of a campus includes historically certified structures Evans Building of the School of Dental Medicine, the University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and Franklin Field, the Lighting Project is also a historic preservation project for some classic fixtures and an aesthetic one as well, since skillfully designed lighting can bring out details of a building's facade that were otherwise less likely to be noticed.

Phases III and IV-which cover areas from the Veterinary School southward, including Hamilton Walk and Woodland Walk-are set to start in February. The initial schedule for completion was October 1998, but the Project is now speeding up. The new target date is Commencement 1998.

Left:

Part of the Lighting Project's work is restoring antique fixtures such as the Samuel Yellin lumieres at Franklin Field. The University Museum also has lumieres by Yellin, a noted craftsman who located his ironworks in West Philadelphia.

Meanwhile, West of 40th Street ...
Some 2000 new fixtures have been installed outside about 1000 properties in University City as part of the cooperative venture UC-BRITE, in which homeowners have bought the fixtures of their choice and are being reimbursed for half the cost. Penn, the City, PECO and the West Philadelphia Partnership launched the program in December 1996, announcing that 63 blocks would be invited to take part. The project grew to include 90 blocks--of which about 60 have been completed with 65% of the residents participating, said D-L Wormley, Penn's Managing Director of Community Housing.
The rest are in progress.