Party At The Moontower!

Picture a group of teenagers partying the night awayThe original moonlight towers light up through carbon
on the last day of school at Lee High School inarc lamps, emitting blue-white light that brightens an
Texas. This is their last chance to drink and getarea with a diameter of around 3,000 feet. It was
drugged with their friends. So drink and get druggedthe perfect solution, albeit a not-so-popular one to
they did! Party at the Moontower!some, to the city’s street-lighting requirements.
And that line earned the reputation even before theThe original towers’ lights needed to be lit up
film got a cult following. The film was Dazed andindividually by the city’s keepers. In the 1920s
Confused, by Austin director Richard Linklater, whothe carbon arc lamps were replaced by incandescent
made one of the Austin moonlight towers the settingbulbs and switches at the towers’ bases made
for this 1993 movie.lighting them up easier and quicker. During the second
From the 19th century to the 1990s and onwards,world war when security demanded massive city
the Austin moonlight towers continued to brighten upblackouts, a central switching system was devised to
the city’s night skies.enable simultaneously switching off the towers’
The moonlight tower made famous in the 1993 filmlights. The incandescent bulbs were later replaced
was erected in the mid 1890s in Austin. Thirty one ofwith mercury vapor bulbs and automated switches
these towers, each standing a hundred and sixty fiveeven.
feet tall and weighing around five thousand pounds,The advent of smaller, more easily maintained street
were manufactured, assembled, and erected by thelamps would have made the moonlight towers extinct
Indiana-based Fort Wayne Electric Company afterearlier had it not been for the historical and
being commissioned by the city government ofarcheological impact. The National Register of Historic
Austin. The towers solved the street lightingPlaces came to the rescue of the dwindling numbers
problems of Austin then, just as it did in otherof the moonlight towers.
American cities at the turn of the last century.After being listed in the National Register of Historic
These moonlight towers, so called because their lightsPlaces, the city of Austin passed ordinances in order
glowed like moonlight artificial though it was, illuminateto protect the remaining towers. As much as
Austin until the present, at least more than ten ofpossible, demolition of the towers was prohibited,
the original thirty one towers still do. With the othersalthough dismantling has been done on at least two
having been lost to accidents, new construction andof them to give way to construction development
development, seventeen of the towers that survivedlike the Austin Convention Center. Since then, the
have been designated as historical and archeologicalcity, from 1993 onwards, embarked on a $1.3 Million
treasures, the landmarks listed in the NRHP or therestoration project for the remaining towers. With
National Register of Historic Places.the restoration, the moonlight towers live on.