But then there’s that million-dollar view. After changing the lights’ colors on the touchscreen, the controller can see the result 15 seconds later by looking out the windows or stepping through a door to a platform outside where the lights are mounted.

On the face of the waterfalls, colors fade to white as the next colored gel covers the spotlight and a new hue spills with the water over the falls. With each color change, it’s as if someone has dumped dye into the river above as it careens over the edge to the rocks below.

The 4,000-watt spotlights burn with a combined brilliance of 8.2 billion candles, about what NASA used to light the runway for night space shuttle landings. Gordon staggers the lights to avoid repeating color combinations, changing them as often as every five minutes to keep things fresh for tourists milling across the street below.

Like other landmarks, including the Empire State Building and Eiffel Tower, the falls have been lit to honor a variety of causes: Alzheimer’s Disease, World AIDS Day, Canada’s Remembrance Day, March of Dimes and others. The charities are not asked to pay the $85 an hour it takes to light the falls. The cost is split among Niagara Falls, N.Y., Niagara Falls, Ontario, Niagara Parks and Ontario Hydro. Each bulb costs $1,500.

Not everyone loves the illumination. “All that does is make it into a sideshow,” said Paul Gromosiak, a Niagara Falls historian who advocates for keeping the falls in their most natural state and questions the logic and expense of using artificial light on a natural wonder. “The only light we should have on the falls is moonlight.”

As midnight nears, Gordon goes back to the patriotic colors that began the night, leaving them on for 15 minutes. The colors retract and the water rushes white for the last few minutes, and the falls fade to black.