Lights of Liberty getting a high-tech update

Light just ain't what it used to be.

So it is that Lights of Liberty, the sound-and-light show that has run in Independence National Historical Park and environs every summer since 1999, is getting pixilated.

As part of the $10 million project, Historic Philadelphia Inc. - the nonprofit that runs the show and other area attractions - also will construct a 3-D, 360-degree theater as part of new headquarters space carved out on the ground floor of the Public Ledger Building at Sixth and Chestnut Streets, officials announced at a news conference Monday.

The new theater will accommodate 65 people and will open the weekend of July Fourth with a 12-minute, 3-D icons-of-liberty show. Admission will be $7 for adults, $6 for others.

Next spring a completely revamped outdoor show, all digital, all 3-D, will open. Admission prices have yet to be determined; in the recent past they ranged from $13 for children to $19.50 for adults.

The analog Lights of Liberty show, which took visitors on a nighttime walk as scenes of revolution flickered across historic buildings and sounds of public debate were broadcast into wireless headsets, already has been retired.

"As wonderful as the show was, it needed updating," Gov. Rendell said at Monday's news conference, held in the stripped and partly rebuilt new theater and headquarters space. He noted that the old show had functioned only after dark and in good weather: "We needed a daytime show, and we needed a show to bring people into the [Historic Philadelphia] center."

On nights with bad weather, it now will be possible to replicate the outdoor show inside the new theater, officials said. Otherwise, the theater will be used for the digital 12-minute show, dubbed Liberty 360.

Officials billed Liberty 360 as the first 3-D, 360-degree panorama to be ever shown. Visitors will enter a cylindrical space and be surrounded by an eight-foot-high screen featuring imagery presented in 16 million-pixel resolution.

Liberty 360 and the outdoor Lights of Liberty are being created by New York-based Niles Creative Group, which also did the 10 million-pixel Comcast Center lobby show.

The new hour-long outdoor show, which debuts next spring and will run annually into the fall, will be a nighttime walking show billed by officials as the first such outdoor 3-D extravaganza. As with the old analog show, images will be projected across facades of buildings throughout Independence Park and its immediate neighborhood.

The state provided $5 million in capital funding for the project; the Lenfest Foundation and Peco Corp. contributed about $1 million, Historic Philadelphia officials said.

The new Public Ledger Building space will be a ticketing and information hub for Historic Philadelphia, currently lodged in the old park visitor center at Third and Chestnut Streets. That site will be the home of a new museum run by the American Revolution Center. The park's public archaeology laboratory, also in the old visitor center, will move to the First Bank building across the street.