The Con Ed building’s handsome limestone 26-story tower, completed in 1929, sports some very appropriate ornamental elements.
Decorating the facade are images of candles and oil lamps—which makes sense for the former headquarters of a huge power company.
“At the base of the tower these include torches, lamps, and urns on the original canopy at the main entrance on Irving Place and torches, suns, candelabra, Jupiter heads, and lightning bolts on the frieze over the first-story shop windows,” states the Landmarks Preservation Commission report from 2009.
And of course, there’s the incredible 38-foot bronze lantern capping the top of the tower.
“This tower was planned to be dramatically lighted at night, advertising the wonders of the electricity that the company sold,” reports New York Architecture Images. “Known as the ‘Tower of Light,’ this was memorial to the company’s employees who had died in World War I.”
Tags: clock tower buildings in New York City, Con Ed Building Irving Place, Con Ed Tower of Light, Con Edison, great architecture in NYC, Henry Hardenburgh, Landmark buildings in NYC, Skyscrapers of early New York
Ephemeral New York 
September 21, 2010 at 9:08 am |
I used to live on 13th Street and it was always great to look out my window and check on the time. Once, in the 1970s, the clock was stopped for weeks at the time as workmen had laced the tower with ropes and descended down and did some repairs. I never found out what they were doing but the clock worked very well after that.
September 22, 2010 at 5:17 am |
*Con Ed is still based there