The 2025 ArchLIGHT Summit happens this September at the Dallas Market Center. In anticipation, the Morlights team is revisiting the history of light in this Texan star.
Dallas’ first formal street illumination arrived in 1874, when gas lamps were introduced downtown by the Dallas Gas Company, the city’s earliest gas and heat utility.
Dallas’ first formal street illumination arrived in 1874, when gas lamps were introduced downtown. By 1882, after the formation of the utility, Dallas Power & Light, electric street lighting came online, eventually replacing gaslight.
Dallas’ first formal street illumination arrived in 1874, when gas lamps were introduced downtown. By 1882, after the formation of the utility, Dallas Power & Light, electric street lighting came online, eventually replacing gaslight.
1934 - The Red Pegasus
Installed atop the Magnolia Building in 1934, the revolving neon Pegasus became Dallas’ symbol of light: an oil-age logo turned city signature. It remains one of the skyline’s most recognizable lights.
1958 - Mercantile Neon Clock and Spire
The Mercantile National Bank Building crowned its wartime tower with a four-sided illuminated clock and neon-rimmed spire added during the 1950s, cementing Main Street’s mid-century night silhouette.
1972 - Kimbell Art Museum
A Louis Kahn masterpiece, where "light is the theme." Bathed in natural light and reflections through architectural detailings from cycloid vaults to winged aluminum reflectors, the entire museum is painted with light to best position viewing of the art.
1978 - Reunion Tower’s Glow-Grid
Designed by architect Welton Becket, Reunion Tower arrived with a geodesic ball of lights, an instant Postmodernist icon later re-engineered with LEDs.
1988–1989 – Dallas Adopts Percent for Art
Dallas formalized a Percent for Art program (administered today by the Office of Arts & Culture), embedding public art into capital projects citywide, a framework that would later help light-based works come to fruition.
1988–1989 – Pegasus Plaza and a Downtown Comeback
After years of neglect, Pegasus Plaza opened in 1994 to anchor Main Street’s revival, encouraging people to come back to and use downtown while activating the area with events.
2009 - "SpectraScape" at Main Street Garden
The Main Street Garden introduced “SpectraScape,” an interactive light work commissioned through the city’s Public Art Program. The program incorporated opportunities for light to be used as an installation medium, turning the park into a nighttime canvas.
2011 – Omni Goes LED
The Omni Dallas Hotel lit up with a programmable LED facade, used for animations and civic messaging and actings as a contemporary counterpart to the Pegasus’ neon presence.
2014 – James Carpenter’s “Light Veil,” Cotton Bowl
At Fair Park, artist James Carpenter’s “Light Veil” sculpture laced the historic Cotton Bowl with stainless mesh and integrated illumination to refract day-light and shimmering by night to knit Art Deco past and modern present.
2021 – West End Square: Smart, Responsive Lighting
Horton Lees Brogden Lighting Design works with James Corner Field Operations to create West End Square, a park layered with adaptive LED lighting.
Alongside art, Dallas is modernizing streetlighting to target LED upgrades in high-need corridors, add brightness, cut energy, and improve reliability, integrating the practical with the poetic.
A Legacy of Light
Dallas keeps using light to shape experience, whether branding its skyline, animating public spaces and extending the reach of its arts ecosystem. As ArchLIGHT Summit convenes the industry this fall, Dallas offers a living case study in how cities engineer atmosphere, identity and community in the best possible light.
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