Regions Bank will light its downtown Birmingham headquarters red, white and blue this week for the Fourth of July and the nation’s 250th birthday.

The new display goes up Wednesday and will shine each night after sunset, around 8:30 p.m., into early July. The flag’s colors will cover the north and south sides of the 30-story tower, with “USA” on the east and west.

Putting it together took more than 300 hours of work. The building has no system that switches the colors on its own, so crews did it by hand, moving floor by floor and sliding colored sleeves over the white lights above each window.

“Every year, we receive feedback from people who love seeing the illuminations of the Regions Center, and we thought this Independence Day provided a great opportunity to launch a new design,” said Michael Branca, head of Corporate Services for Regions Bank.

“This is a milestone for our nation as we mark 250 years of independence, and we are proud to join our fellow Americans celebrating this special occasion.”

A grid marked which windows got red and which got blue. Over the past several weeks, they pulled the sleeves that formed the golfer the tower shows each spring for the Regions Tradition and replaced them with the ones spelling out the flag and “USA,” testing the design early in the morning and late at night.

The building has carried lighted displays since the 1970s, a few years after it opened in 1971 as a joint headquarters for First National Bank of Birmingham and Sonat, the Southern Natural Gas company. Fluorescent light tubes above each window were installed to keep the tower glowing white every night, but the energy crisis of that decade ended the practice. A Sonat executive who saw a Houston building use the same kind of curtain-wall design for a Christmas display later pushed to bring one to Birmingham.

The Christmas display has run every year since. It goes up the night after Thanksgiving with two Christmas trees, a wreath and a stocking, and stays lit through New Year’s Day.

The golfer follows each spring for the Regions Tradition. The tower has also marked the bigger moments: the Olympic torch and rings in 1996, when Legion Field hosted soccer for the Atlanta Games, and an American flag and “USA” during the 1991 Gulf War.

The display will light each night after sunset through the holiday. Regions has posted drone video of the display on its YouTube channel.