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Boston is getting lit tonight at City Hall

Flipping The Switch

Boston is getting lit tonight at City Hall

Tonight, the City of Boston is getting lit.

The city is opening up City Hall Plaza, the front lawn of Boston’s best-known (and most-hated) Brutalist building, to food trucks, carnival style–games, and beer-swilling citizens to celebrate its latest attempt to gussy up Government Center.

Attendees at Light Bright Beer Garden, this year’s last Beer Garden on the Bricks, will witness a colorful light display on the angular concrete massing so deliberately stripped of ornamentation.

The official promotion video below gives a hint of the light display in action:

If early online comments on the event are any indication, bright primary-school colors might not be enough to make jaded Bostonians love architecture firm Kallmann McKinnell & Wood’s difficult creation. YouTube user Shaun Beacham writes: “We’re sorry the building looks like a prison, but we put some lights on it and now it’s a colorful prison!” A few pints in, Shaun, and it might not look so bad!

The event begins at 6:30 p.m. tonight at City Hall Plaza. Can’t make it? Follow 

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