The Light Gate Sunset Gets One Night. Pierhenge Gets the Whole Week.

At 4:50 PM on Saturday, November 14, the sun will drop into the ocean at the bottom of 14th Street. Viewed from Highland Avenue, between City Hall and the Library, it will sit inside the keyhole of a glass and steel sculpture. Down the hill on the beach, under the Manhattan Beach Pier, a second group of people will be watching the same sun slip into the gap between the pilings.

Local coverage tends to treat these two events as a pair. MB News has described Pierhenge as roughly coinciding with the Light Gate sunset. In practice they run on different clocks. The sculpture's opening is narrow, so the alignment is a single evening. The pier's opening is wide, so its alignment lasts for days. That difference decides when to go to each one.

Same Sun, Two Very Different Openings

The City states the Light Gate alignment plainly. Its page for the artwork says, "Each January 27th and November 14th, the sunset will align within the keyhole." Pierhenge coverage gives a range of dates instead.

Why the Keyhole Allows Only One Evening

Mags Harries and Lajos Héder of the Harries/Héder Collective designed Light Gate. It was dedicated on Wednesday, February 25, 2015, and the artists gave a presentation that day in the Police/Fire Conference Room at 420 15th Street. In the City's words, the sculpture "will focus the view through an opening down 14th Street to the Ocean." The opening is small, and the sun's setting point moves along the horizon from one day to the next, so the sun fits inside the frame for only a short stretch each season.

The sculpture came out of the City's Centennial Art Project. The request for qualifications went out in July 2012, and the piece was chosen through the Art in Public Places Committee, a group of Cultural Arts Commissioners and community members. As MB News reported, the artists' commission was $130,000, paid from the City's Public Art Trust Fund. According to the City's Art in Public Places page, that fund is paid for by a dedicated 1% development fee, not the general fund.

Today's sculpture is not exactly the one dedicated in 2015. The original panels were fused glass with an embedded film meant to scatter sunlight like a prism, and over time they faded. On March 6, 2019, acting on a Cultural Arts Commission recommendation, the City Council approved money from the Public Arts Trust Fund to replace five panels with dichroic laminated glass made by Goldray Glass with 3M film. The City unveiled the refresh on September 13, 2019, saying visitors would see "a vast array of colors" depending on viewing angle and light.

A single precise evening draws a crowd. In January 2019, the Daily Breeze reported nearly 60 people at the keyhole, with photographers arriving early to set up tripods. On November 14, 2022, MB News counted about 50, and Councilmember Joe Franklin came with City Manager Bruce Moe. A year later, MB News reported that the crowd of about 50 formed "a line to take individual pictures through the 'keyhole' as the sun was setting."

Why the Pier Allows Several Days

The pier works the same way at a much larger scale. MB News described Pierhenge as "the period of several days in November and January when the sun sets perfectly through the Manhattan Beach Pier," and explained that "since there's a wider visual opening at the Manhattan Beach Pier, Pierhenge can last several days in either direction."

Evelyn Schmitt, a Manhattan Beach resident who spent four decades teaching math, knows that window better than almost anyone. In a January 2024 Easy Reader profile, she put the November peak on the 17th and said the effect "also comes in a few days early and remains a few days after." That is why she goes down every night. The same profile says she likes the top position under the pier, and it notes that she skips the sculpture because she "can't be in two places at once."

"When I started doing it, nobody was down there. They weren't interested. I started putting the photos on Facebook, and now people fight for position."

Evelyn Schmitt, speaking to Easy Reader in January 2024

Her pictures show the window in action. For MB News' 2023 coverage, she shared a November 13 shot with the sun "just a teeny bit shy of perfect center." So the day before the named date already gets close. That same evening, she said, the clouds and sunset "put on a magnificent show over Palos Verdes."

The Crowd Keeps to the Calendar. The Sun Doesn't.

Light Gate has one date, so everyone comes the same night. At the pier, the window has no official date, but the crowd still clusters on one evening.

On one November night in 2021, about 100 photographers lined up under the pier. In a report on the scene for MB News, Jefferson Graham called it a "wild scene" and noted photographer John Post working from a large ladder. On November 17, 2022, a few days past the Light Gate date, MB News reported "only about 10 photographers on hand." Schmitt said that was the night she took "the most beautiful and colorful Pierhenge I have ever captured."

So roughly a tenth of the crowd got what Schmitt considered her best result. Weather was a big part of it. "The clouds make the difference," she told MB News. Heavy clouds had built up early, and the sun broke through late. Before it did, the man beside her had predicted, "Last night was perfect; this night is not going to be anything."

The 2023 Light Gate date shows the downside of putting everything on one evening. MB News wrote that "some cloud cover prevented the keyhole sunset from being truly epic," and about two dozen photographers were at the pier that night anyway. If November 14 is cloudy, Light Gate has no backup night until January 27. Pierhenge offers a few more chances.

Watch Light Gate on its one night, and go to the pier on another evening in the window, when the sand under the pilings is less crowded.

Planning the Week of November 14

1. Saturday, November 14, Light Gate. The City lists the gathering from 4:15 to 5:00 PM on Highland Avenue between City Hall and the Library, with sunset at 4:50 PM. The listing names no speakers and no formal program. People simply watch the sunset through the sculpture. The City notes that special event dates and times can change, so check the event listing that week.
2. The evenings before and after, Pierhenge. Go under the pier on the sand. Schmitt's November 13 photo and her November 17 favorite show how wide the window is. On a clear week, any of those evenings can work.
3. Parking for Light Gate. The Civic Center Lower Lot is entered from 13th Street and the Upper Lot from 15th Street, and the City lists a two-hour limit for each. Downtown, the old Lot 3 structure has been demolished and an interim surface lot is open in its place.
4. Arriving early at the pier. The Roundhouse Aquarium at the end of the pier lists weekday public hours of 2 to 5 PM and weekend hours of 10 AM to 5 PM, so it closes just as the light starts turning.
5. If clouds win. Both alignments come back around January 27. Schmitt's verdict on the event is that "Every year it's different."

Light Gate is a public artwork that took years to commission and restore. It works because a neighborhood street runs straight to the water and someone thought to frame that view. Here at Gauss Real Estate Group, we follow how blocks like the top of 14th Street relate to the ocean below, from the sightlines to the parking. If you'd like to talk about the part of Manhattan Beach where you watch the sunset, let's start the conversation today.