Downtown Dallas’ Omni Hotel Turns Purple In Memory Of The Late, Impossibly Great Prince.
Say what you will about Downtown Dallas’ obsession with LED lights, but the people who operate them have in recent years done a marvelous job of using their powers for good, be it through their visual support of landmark LGBT rulings or by honoring French and Pakistani terror victims.
Tonight, one of Dallas’ light operators once again flashed a remarkable color about which our city could be proud. At 9 p.m. CST, following a social media campaign that may or may not have helped spur the action, Omni Dallas Hotel light operator Pat Anderson alternately lit up the Downtown Dallas’ LED facade to flash a full purple display and to read “Purple Rain” in purple block text as an homage to the late, phenomenally great musician Prince, who passed today at the age of 57.
Despite some faked Instragram photos that are making the rounds, it should be noted that this was not a skyline-wide move. Other prominent Downtown Dallas buildings with changeable LED capacities remained their usual colors; Bank of America Plaza bore its standard green piping and Reunion Tower flashed its usual gold. But their standing pat, if anything, only highlighted the boldness and charm of the Omni’s call to go purple.
“I think [The Omni Hotel] has a great impact on the aesthetic of the downtown skyline, and it certainly is a great thing,” Anderson told us in a 2012 interview when asked about the impact his efforts at the Omni can have on the city’s literal and figurative image.
Tonight, Anderson showed off once more his acute awareness of this fact, tastefully paying homage to a revered and talented performer whose untimely passing rocked the world today.
Take in Anderson’s efforts for yourself via the above Instagram video and the below photograph, both of which come courtesy of the great Dallas skyline photographer Justin Terveen, who was kind enough to pass along his captures from this evening along for our readers’ enjoyment and to help us all, in the words of Prince himself, get through this thing called life.