When Monsignor Henry Breier was transferred to The Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis to serve as its rector four years ago, one of the first things he noticed about the imposing structure, a union of Byzantine and Romanesque architecture built at the turn of the last century, was the dim interior lighting. Parishioners and other visitors couldn’t fully appreciate the cathedral’s spectacular mosaics, comprising 40 million pieces of colored glass.
Over the years, many of the existing light fixtures had been replaced with lesser ones that didn’t provide adequate illumination, says Breier. Others were coming to the end of their lifespans, he says, and the transition to LED technology, followed by the ban this past summer on the sale of incandescent bulbs, made it difficult to replace them. As bulbs burned out faster than they could be replaced, the church was running out of lighting options. “You just can’t put lights you buy at the hardware store into the cathedral,” says Breier. Lighting the basilica would require a creative and comprehensive plan.
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Randy Burkett of St. Louis lighting design firm Reed Burkett Lighting Design was hired to devise that plan. The finished project, in the works for close to four years, was completed in September. “Normally we’re engaged as part of a larger design team where there’s an architect, interior designer, engineer, and so forth,” says Burkett—who’s designed lighting for some iconic American structures, including the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C., and the Gateway Arch—“but none of those were on this project. This was our project to transform through light and light alone.”
Technical surveys revealed details about how the building is used at Mass time and during other religious services, as well as the amount of ambient light that’s available during the day and at night in the nave, the two side chapels, and behind the scenes. To gauge light levels, Burkett and his team peeked in on a wedding and accompanied docents on their tours, noting the mosaics that needed more light. “We tried not to be invasive,” Burkett says. “We watched the way people saw the cathedral as they walked through. I’ve always had an interest in churches and cathedrals, and we were fortunate to have this opportunity in St. Louis.”
“Ninety percent of the church is lit from one large light box above the center dome,” says Paul Krobath, an estimator and project manager with Schaeffer Electric, the company responsible for the installation of Burkett’s design. That original box, dating to the midcentury, called for 108 500-watt bulbs to light the center body of the building. The new design replaced those bulbs with 35 large LED fixtures, which required electricians to climb 150 feet above the floor and into an 8-foot diameter hole in the concrete ceiling.
The electronic control system, which serves as the backbone for the church, was also upgraded, enabling each fixture to be individually controlled through a series of a dozen or so “scenes,” or settings. “Since we have control over the lighting, we can now sculpt the look to reinforce the activity. Each light has a role,” says Burkett, adding that the system is also backed up in the event of a power failure.
An electrician spent weeks alone in the cathedral, tracing electrical pathways in order to find abandoned conduits. Once the phase of lighting the mosaics began, Schaeffer ramped up the number of electricians onsite.
The challenge of lighting mosaics stems from the glass itself, which doesn’t transmit so much as reflect light of a particular color and texture. Managing where that reflection travels, and how it reveals the material, is an art. “Some mosaics are illuminated from multiple positions,” Burkett says, “so the views to those mosaics will change from space to space.” He recalls night after night of mockups during the early design phase in which the team moved sample fixtures into different positions, calculating light levels to determine what would best flatter the art. “Monsignor Breier and his colleagues would walk around and look at them from different angles and say, ‘Oh, we don’t like that’ or ‘Oh, that looks spectacular. Let’s do that. The process helped build the solution,” says Burkett. Practical matters worked their way into the design scheme too, including where to place the equipment. “Unlike in a museum, you have limitations,” he says. “[In a museum], you’re typically working with a very formal structure. You can move lights on tracks and get it just right. When you’re in a place like the basilica, you just can’t hang things in the middle of the dome, for example, to get a key light on a piece of sculpture. So we have to find other ways.”
The basilica holds four galleries on the mezzanine level and that’s where most of the accent lighting has been set up. Others can be found in the four corner towers that give rise to the main dome. In the baldacchino—the canopy that covers the altar—lighting is integrated into nooks and crannies, set atop columns, and suspended in midair, creating an effect of softly glowing baskets of light.
An artistic, interpretive approach was required to light the marble statues. “You can light a sculpture of a human figure in half a dozen ways and have them [all] look different,” says Burkett. “One might be more emotional, and then one might be flat and less engaging.” When you think like a lighting designer, the questions become, Where can I put lighting equipment to bring out the folds in the stone garments? How do I use lighting to emphasize the facial expression of empathy? “Sculptures are very different [from the mosaics],” says Burkett, “but also quite important.” The predominant goal is to draw visitors’ attention to the elements that reinforce the story of the basilica and the Church as a whole.
“If you’ve been to the cathedral but you haven’t been back since the new lighting, one of things that you’ve never seen before are the mosaics in all their glory,” says Breier. The baldacchino, which was also recently cleaned, is further highlighted by the new lighting that now shines onto the massive structure. “And,” says Breier, “when it’s not Mass time and the cathedral is dark inside, you’ll notice a gold light circling everything. It’s a nice ambient feel of being bathed in gold.”
