PUBLIC LIGHTING IN DETROIT
1981
AMBASSADOR BRIDGE ILLUMINATED FOR THE FIRST TIME
1948
FIRST NIGHT GAME AT TIGER STADIUM
1895
CITY BEGINS SYSTEMATICALLY INSTALLING LIGHTING ON STREETS AND PUBLIC BUILDINGS
1883
FIRST ELECTRIC ARC STREET LIGHTING INSTALLED ON WOODWARD AND JEFFERSON AVENUES
1879
DETROIT’S FIRST ELECTRIC LIGHT SWITCHED ON
1st CENTURY AD
FIRST STREET LIGHTS INSTALLED BY ROMAN EMPIRE
ARC LIGHT KILLS A SMOKER
Detroit homes and public streets in the early 1800’s were lit by candles or small lamps that burned lard or whale oil. Public streetlights were oil lamps mounted on posts, located at street corners. At the time, Detroit boasted a population of just 900 people. By the middle of the century, whale oil and candles gave way to kerosene lamps, but the sooty and pungent kerosene was soon competing with a flourishing gas lighting business. The incandescent light bulb made its first appearance in Detroit at Metcalf Brothers’ dry goods store in 1883. Soon, other merchants in the city’s central business district were demanding incandescent light bulbs of their own. In the late 1800’s oil and kerosene lighting methods were overtaken by three new systems: gas lighting, electric incandescent lighting, and electric arc lighting. Gas was used for public lighting and interior lighting in both residences and businesses. The gas used was a coal gas which was accidentally discovered in the 1840’s as a by-product of tar production. After gas was extracted from the coal, it was stored, and then delivered to users through a network of pipes laid under city streets. The primary drawback to gas lighting was the danger of fire, particularly indoors. Leaking or partially closed light fixtures could fill a room or building with an explosive volume of gas, often resulting in a deadly blast and fire. The Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 is also known as The Great Fire because the greater part of its destruction was the result of fire caused by the quake-shattered gas lighting network. Gas lighting, because of its soft glow, was barely adequate indoors, but outdoors, the dim glow scarcely carried from the lamppost, creating large shadows on the street below. Arc lighting, which gave a bright light similar to a mercury vapor lamp, offered a solution to this problem. Arc lighting bears its name from the electric current passed between two carbon electrodes, creating an arc. Very bright light results from both the arc and the incandescence of the carbon electrodes as they burn in the open air. The arc lighting system could be attached to large towers, perfect for lighting the streets of a city. An arc lighting tower usually carried 4 to 6 lights, each with the power of 2,000 to 6,000 candles.
In most American cities the lighting tower infrastructure was combined with arc lamps placed on poles or hung at intersections, and complemented with gas or and oil lamps, or incandescents. Detroit was the only large City in the U.S. (and in the world) lighted wholly and exclusively by the tower system. Detroit placed 122 towers with a height of 100 to 180 feet, lighting 21 square miles of the city. All towers were installed in the 1880s and remained in use up to the end of the 1910s. - Low Tech Magazine
21 square miles around Grand Circus Park
The press of the country has uniformly conceded Detroit to be the best-lighted city in the world. All its streets, yards, backyards and grounds are illuminated as effectually as by the full moon at the zenith. The blending of light from the mass of towers serves to prevent dense shadows. - Municipal Lighting (1888)
PLD SURVEY 9,000 Street Lights Broken
DTE SURVEY
35,200 Street Lights Broken
88,000 Total Street Lights in Detroit
The Detroit Public Lighting Department is in a state of chronic disrepair, and absent a substantial capital infusion or a private sector manager, will continue to deteriorate... It would take an estimated $250 million, at minimum, to upgrade the system, McKinsey found -- money that’s not on the table... Streetlights alone pose a massive problem. Of the roughly 33,000 lights the city is responsible for, about 12,000 to 15,000 are on series circuits, “which were state of the art in the 1920s,” McKinsey wrote. “Transformer coils for these lights can no longer be purchased -- PLD will run out of replacement parts in one to two years.” - Crain’s Detroit Business
The City of Detroit Public Lighting Department (PLD) operates and maintains a 180MW natural gas fired power plant as well as thirty-one (31) substations throughout the City; it provides power to over 1,800 public and private customers, 87,000 street and alley lights, as well as 1,200 traffic signal installations. PLD was in a state of disrepair with less than 20% of its generating capacity available for service; 44% of its critical equipment in service; over 12,000 streetlights out-of-service; and an organization that was not functioning as one cohesive unit. IMG was asked to identify opportunities for business and operating improvements in the PLD and develop an action plan to implement immediate and long-term performance enhancement as well as operating and capital cost efficiencies. - Infrastructure Management Group Case Study (2005)