SAN FRANCISCO — Located between Golden Gate Park and The Presidio, St. Ignatius Church has been a city landmark for close to a century. Lindsley Architectural Lighting enhanced the visual features of the cathedral with ETC’s Selador Series LED lighting fixtures. Constructed between 1910 and 1914, this Jesuit parish’s twin towers rise over 200 feet. Any aging structure faces its challenges, however. St. Ignatius’ 40-year-old fluorescent architectural lighting was beginning to fail, and the color temperature of the fluorescent fixtures did little to bring out the beauty of the architecture and Stations of the Cross, depicted through oil paintings created in Rome.
To address the church’s lighting needs, Lindsley Architectural Lighting came up with a plan, lighting the side chapel first.
“When we first added architectural lighting to the side nave arches, it revealed how beautiful this church can be, so we wanted to extend it to the upper sanctuary,” said Howard Case, the church’s capital projects manager. “This presented the opportunity to highlight the extraordinary architectural details of that space, with a core component of the solution being ETC’s Selador Series LED lighting fixtures.”
“We were charged with making the lighting more energy efficient,” noted Alan Lindsley, principal of Lindsley Architectural Lighting. “Additionally, we wanted to reinforce the spirituality of the space, support different worship-service formats and ensure the lighting-control system was easy to operate.
As they discussed options, Lindsley suggested adding color to accent the details and coordinate the lighting color with the colors of the liturgical calendar. Additionally, a system with color-changing capability could enhance the musical and theatrical performances held in the main sanctuary.
Various technologies were investigated to achieve color-changing capabilities, but Lindsley was displeased with the complexity of the equipment and the power needed to project saturated colors over the required throw distances — until he tried out ETC’s Selador LED fixtures.
“We tried a Selador fixture and discovered it did a great job of meeting the design parameters. The decrease in complexity was also a benefit to the church to keep maintenance requirements minimal.” The Selador fixtures also offered a seven-color LED design, helping them match the color temperature of existing lighting.
“The Selador units provide a wide range of spread lenses to meet the designer’s needs,” Lindsley added. “We ended up with one two-foot unit per column and rib with two high-power units at the spring points of the proscenium arch.”
ETC’s Unison architectural dimming with LCD control panels provided centralized control over the lighting system, Lindsley noted, and “offers the ability to easily expand the system in the future.”
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