Moonlight tower
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Moonlight towers are lighting structures designed to illuminate large areas of a city at night.
The structures were popular in the late nineteenth century among smaller cities across the United States and Europe, when standard street-lighting systems - using smaller, shorter, and more numerous lamps - were impractically expensive. The towers were designed to illuminate more city area at once via electric lighting. Arc lamps were the most common method of illumination, though they were known for their exceptionally bright and harsh light.
As regular street lighting grew more popular, the prevalence of moonlight tower systems began to wane.
Contents |
[edit] Moonlight towers in Austin, Texas
Austin, Texas is the only city in the world known to still operate a system. The towers are 150 feet tall and have a fifteen foot foundation. This type of tower was manufactured in Indiana and assembled onsite. In 1894, the City of Austin purchased 31 used lighting towers from Detroit. A single tower cast a bright light from its six carbon arc lamps, illuminating a 1500-foot radius circle brightly enough to read a watch by.
When first installed, the towers were connected to their own electric generators at the Austin dam (near present-day Tom Miller dam). Over the years they were switched from their original carbon-arc lamps (which were exceedingly bright and time-consuming to inspect and maintain) to incandescent lamps in the 1920s and mercury-vapor lamps in the 1930s. Mercury-vapor lighting allowed the installation of a simple switch at each tower's base. During World War II, a central switch was installed, allowing citywide blackouts in case of air raids.
In 1993 the city of Austin dismantled the towers and restored them down to every bolt, turnbuckle and guy wire. The 17 remaining towers were listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 and are therefore protected from demolition.
[edit] Texas Historical Commission Marker Text
| This is one of 17 that remain out of 31 towers erected 1894-95 and in continuous use since. Their carbon arc lights then illuminated the entire city. Now mercury vapor lamps provide beacons for many miles on roads and airway, from dusk to dawn. Austin is said to be unique in this dramatic method of lighting.<ref>Texas Historical Commission</ref> |
[edit] In Popular Culture
Austin-based writer/director Richard Linklater used one of the moonlight towers as a one of the main settings in his 1993 film Dazed and Confused.
[edit] External links
<references/>
- Photos of Austin's Moonlight towers, hosted by the Portal to Texas History
