Long after darkness falls over the rest of Tribeca, light continues to pour through the windows of every south-facing apartment at 6 Varick St.

Residents inside the 10-story loft building at the convergence of Varick and West Broadway, accustomed to gazing out over the twinkling expanse of Lower Manhattan, now keep their curtains closed and their blinds shut. Down the street, the New York Law School’s recently opened, all-glass library and classroom building is perpetually aglow.

“I can practically read a book in my apartment with the lights off,” said Patricia Aakre, who has lived on the eighth floor at 6 Varick with her husband, Richard, since the early 1970s. Her bedroom windows overlook the see-through addition to the law school. Nearly all of the lights in the $200-million building burn 24 hours a day, to accommodate students working late into the night. When the building opened earlier this year, Aakre said she and her husband were shocked by how bright the lights appeared to be, and that they would remain aglow around the clock.

“It was just very jarring,” she said. “In the beginning, we lost sleep, but now we’re trying to learn to live with it.”

Two floors below the Aakres, Carole Hochman and her family used to revel in the nighttime view. Since the law school building was completed, though, Hochman said she keeps the blinds in her living room closed.

“It feels like being in some kind of exhibit,” Hochman said.

On the seventh floor, Keith Steimel said he and his wife will have to buy curtains for their floor-to-ceiling windows to keep the law school’s piercing fluorescence out of their apartment.

“It’s an inherent design flaw,” he said. “I’m sure if you’re inside the building, it’s great because you can look out and see all of the historic buildings in the neighborhood. But if you’re outside looking in, all you get is the light shining at you.”

As complaints from 6 Varick Street residents mounted, their management company, Andrews Building Corp., has been pressing the law school to tone down late-night lighting. In a phone interview with the Trib, the school’s dean and president, Richard Matasar, said he has already taken some steps to dim the glow.

“We’ve installed some timers and motion sensors, and we’ll be putting those in throughout the building,” Matasar said. On any given night, there are around 100 students using the library or the various the study areas in the six-story building, he added, and at least twice that number during final exams. While he agreed that most of the building’s non-necessary lighting would be turned off during late-night hours, Matasar said there was “only so much that can be done to ameliorate the building’s design,” and that lights in the halls and study rooms, in the library and in the outer stairwells needed to remain on for safety reasons.

“We certainly don’t want to do anything that makes us bad neighbors,” Matasar said. “But it’s not like we can replace the glass walls with bricks. We’re obviously searching for the minimum impact for our neighbors. Whatever isn’t necessary we will turn off.”

Harry Kendall, a principal architect on the project and longtime Tribeca resident, said the building’s lights are still a work in progress, and that the situation has vastly improved since the addition opened in April.

“I watched as it went from harsh to more gentle,” Kendall said. “When the building began to be lit I thought, ‘Oh wow, somebody is thinking this is a nightmare and we have to quickly move to the real usage.’”

A secondary concern for residents is what they see as wasted wattage. A building of such size—235,000 square feet—keeping its lights on all day, every day must be a spectacular consumption of electricity, they say.

“It’s such a waste of money and energy. It just surprises me that the school would do something that seems so wasteful and politically incorrect,” Hochman said.

“When everything we hear nowadays is about conserving energy and turning lights off when we’re not using them, this is kind of an odd move for the school,” said Michael Doyle, another resident at 6 Varick.

In the law school’s defense, Matasar said the new building is not any less energy efficient than most 24-hour buildings, but he understands the concerns.

“In a normal building, you wouldn’t see the hallways and stairs lit up because they’re behind walls,” Matasar said. Although the building is not a certified “green building,” Matasar said several of its design features took conservation of energy into consideration.

“We’re not being irresponsible,” he said. “We installed energy-efficient motors for the elevators, and all of the furniture and carpeting is made from sustainable materials. We have every conceivable internal device to regulate the energy usage in the building.”

Matasar said the school would continue looking for ways to reduce the overnight lighting, “so long as it does not compromise the safety of the students.” For the neighbors, such assurances come as cold comfort.

“As much noise as we make, I’m not sure how they’re going to resolve it,” Steimel said. “There doesn’t really seem to be an option. It’s just how the building was built.”