Yes, this happened on Easter in New York City!
Easter is the most important Holy Day of the year, and that’s because it’s the day we celebrate the most important day in human history: the Resurrection of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
In 1956, several buildings in New York City commemorated Easter in a cool way: they lit up certain windows at night to form the shape of a cross!
Here’s what it looked like:
And here’s the photo as it was printed in a newspaper:
You can see that the paper listed times for Easter services on the left. Under the photo, it had this description:
“Huge crosses, formed by lighted windows, blaze above New York’s skyline as part of an Easter display in Manhattan’s financial district. This scene, photographed from the roof of the Municipal Building, features 150-foot-high crosses in the City Services Co., City Bank Farmers Trust Co., and the Forty Wall Street Corp. buildings.”
The picture was published on March 31, and Easter was on April 1 that year. If you consider the time it takes to get a photo printed, it would seem to suggest this wasn’t done on Easter Vigil, but at some point during Holy Week leading up to Easter.