Before they had a way to bring artificial light to ships,The Sidewalk Vault Light Renaissance Articles shipbuilders of the 19th century developed the ingenious idea to incorporate glass into the flooring of the vessels as a way to provide light to dark spaces below deck.
These vault lights, as they would become known, were invented by the American inventor and builder Thaddeus Hyatt. The vault lights were a valuable innovation because they reduced the need for torches, lanterns, and other open-flame lighting that sometimes caused catastrophic fires on old wooden ships.
Thaddeus’s brilliant innovation was soon adopted by cities and developers who incorporated vault lights into sidewalks and other surfaces as a way to bring daylight to below-ground spaces such as apartments, basements, storage spaces, and other subterranean rooms. In the United States, from 1860 until the widespread use of electricity in the 1930s, vault lights brought daylight to dark spaces.
The first vault lighting featured glass shaped like prisms to maximize the spread of light into the room below. To further maximize the light below ground, subsequent sidewalk vault lights incorporate several rows of prisms in cast-iron panels or concrete.
Vault Lights Find Dual Uses
The demand for sustainable light sources and the beauty of new glass products on the market have led to a resurgence in the use of vault lights.
As many designers and architects know, advances in materials and the design of new products have improved the durability of vault lights Many feature a larger surface area for increased light penetration. Those 19th-century sidewalk prisms have been reimagined as circular bullet glass and square vault lights.
In daylight hours, they allow natural light to shine into indoor spaces. Lit from within at night, the glass pieces create a dramatic and warm architectural statement.
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