The Tech Behind: How Baltimore’s Washington Monument gets lit every winter holiday

Outsiders may not know, but Baltimore actually has its own Washington Monument — and it’s older than its counterpart in DC.

Its cornerstone was laid in 1815, nearly two centuries before the inception of an annual tradition: the holiday illumination of this relic in Baltimore’s Mt. Vernon neighborhood, which this year takes place on Thursday, Dec. 7.

The monument, which passersby can ascend year-round for a fee, is stewarded by the Mount Vernon Place Conservancy (MVPC). Since 2008, MVPC has programmed and maintained both the monument and the park squares surrounding it throughout the year.

According to MVPC Executive Director Lance Humphries, the organization was “thrilled” to take on the management of the lighting fully in 2022. Before then, the MVPC spent years as a partner alongside organizations like Downtown Partnership of Baltimore. He added context to the history of the tech-driven luminary event and its logistics on a call with Technical.ly.

“The brief history of the monument lighting is that it has been around for 50 years, just a little over 50 years,” said Humphries. “And when it was first started, it was actually run by the Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks and, you know, it was kind of a small, informal affair. You know, people get to get cookies and milk or cider or whatever in the Walters [Art Museum] at the time. But it was not the event that it is today.”

Conservancy Associate Director Emma Loftus said attendees might see over 20 vendors, a plethora of artists and the Morgan State University choir, which Loftus said puts on a “big spectacular show at the very end, right before the lighting actually takes place and the fireworks go off.”

Morgan State University’s choir performs during a holiday lighting event at the Washington Monument in Baltimore. (Courtesy Mount Vernon Place Conservancy)

The lighting

The monument lighting event depends on both MVPC’s full-time staff and a team of volunteers. However, handling the lighting and pyrotechnics is outsourced to Baltimore-area visual effects company Image Engineering, whose staff was previously tasked with the installation of the monument’s exterior LED fixtures during its 2015 restoration. Its team of technicians, pyrotechnic designers and project managers like Phil Keller manage the technical logistics during the actual lighting event.

“What we’re doing this year, and we did it last year, is we’re using an array of 25-watt or greater, probably gonna be 30-watt, lasers this year to actually do what’s gonna be sort of a three-sided wraparound, edge-blended canvas of laser graphics,” Keller said. “It’s gonna be the north, west and south side [of the monument]. And yeah, that’s using Kvant spectrum lasers”.

Keller said the Image Engineering team worked with Humphries to come up with architectural laser effects that might “play with the actual shape [of the monument] itself.” The software Pangolin, which Keller said works closely with Kvant, is used for controlling the thousands of LED light strings.

“They work hand in hand in hand to kind of have a seamless total software ecosystem, which makes programming [for] both long-format [or] intense scripted shows, [instead of us] just kind of busking [or] throwing up lasers on the spot,” Keller said.

Keller added via email that the display would be programmed and controlled by a grandMA3 console running V2X software. The team uses Finale 3D for the pyrotechnics on the night of the lighting to coordinate fireworks in alignment with a custom soundtrack.

“The sequencing is transferred to one of our Fireone XL series controllers and then fired electronically,” Keller said.

The conservancy co-organized activities on the evening of the free lighting event with The Walters Art Museum. The monument lights stay on until about the second week of January to keep a “little bit of joy alive,” according to Humphries.