Old North installs energy-efficient lights

LEDs haven't yet replaced the slightly less-modern compact fluorescents that the church began using two years ago in its modern versions of the steeple lanterns.

The 18 strips of LEDs inside the church's sanctuary - replacements for old-fashioned incandescents - are an anachronism at the most visited historic site in a city with a rich Revolutionary War legacy.

The lights are tucked into crown molding, illuminating the graceful white ceiling arches while the lights themselves are hidden from direct view by tourists and worshipers below.

"What we've added is light, and beauty," said Ed Pignone, executive director of the Old North Foundation of Boston, which oversees the 285-year-old church on Salem Street.

One of the church's annual half-million visitors agreed the installation was done with historic sensibility.

"It's completely transparent and invisible," said Jim Peluso of Richmond, Va., one of a handful of Old North visitors on a chilly winter Friday. "I guess it's no different than adding running water, or an HVAC system in the church, right?"

The LEDs were donated by Philips Solid-State Lighting Solutions, which was to announce the Old North installation today. The company was formed through last year's acquisition of Color Kinetics, a Burlington-based LED designer, by Netherlands-based Royal Philips Electronics NV.

Old North's ceiling vaults had been only dimly lit by the old incandescents, and they frequently burned out, Pignone said. The LEDs are projected to last at least 25 times as long as the incandescent bulbs, at five times the efficiency. They also do not give off as much heat as the older lights, which caused ceiling paint to peel prematurely.

LEDs are similar to computer semiconductors, but they convert electricity directly to light, rather than heating a metal filament to the point of glowing incandescence. The light streams out of tiny glass domes, about the size of matchstick heads. They are more expensive than incandescents and compact fluorescents, but are touted as eventual replacements for those lights because of their growing efficiency and predictions of increasingly lower costs.

They're among several concessions to modernity and convenience at Old North, the home of an Episcopal congregation. Speakers hang from columns above the pews. While the church's first floor has no artificial lighting, the upper floor is lighted with incandescents.

"Churches are organic," Pignone said. "They're not frozen in time. They're living buildings."

A pair of incandescent lanterns once hung in the steeple to commemorate the signals of Revere's warning, but two years ago they were replaced with compact fluorescents. They are only lighted each Patriots Day - a civic holiday in Massachusetts marking the Revolutionary War's start at Lexington and Concord - and special occasions such as the death of a president, or a World Series victory by the Boston Red Sox.

Pignone isn't ruling out the possibility that Old North Church might eventually replace the compact fluorescents in the steeple lanterns with LEDs. His foundation is reviewing the entire church property's capital needs.