For the next year, the D.C. skyline will feature a luminescent protrusion when the sun goes down. Last night, National Park Service officials flipped on a lighting system on the Washington Monument that will make the 555-foot obelisk glow in the dark while it undergoes repairs sustained in the August 2011 earthquake.

The lights came on shortly after 8:30 p.m., flickering on in progress until the entire monument shined with the light of 488 lamps hidden behind a blue-and-gray shroud. The Washington Monument was draped with the scrim following the installation of a 6,000-piece, 500-ton scaffolding that completely surrounds the marble pillar.

“We want it to look attractive because it’s going to look like this for the next 12 months,” he said,” National Park Service Director Jonathan Jarvis said in his remarks. Jarvis was joined in switching on the monument by Bob Vogel, the superintendent of the National Mall; Caroline Cunningham, the president of the Trust for the National Mall; and David J. Rubenstein, the Carlyle Group co-founder who is covering half the $15 million repair job that is expected to continue through at least spring 2014.

The lighting system might look familiar to anyone who remembers the Washington Monument’s last major repair, in 1999 and 2000, when it was sheathed in a luminescent scaffolding designed by the architect Michael Graves. The display that came online last night is patterned on Graves’ original design.

And starting with last night, the monument will light up every evening at dusk until the scaffolding comes down, either very late this year or in early 2014.