Alright, alright, alright. There might not be any keg-fueled parties going on at Austin’s moontowers anytime soon, but the Texas capital turned filming backdrop forDazed and Confused featured a special cameo from the world’s last remaining specialty streetlights.
Emerging in the late 1800s, moontowers — or moonlight towers — quickly became popular in cities across the United States and operated as high light towers that could illuminate multiple blocks at once. Clocking in at roughly 5,000 pounds and around 160 feet tall, they offered ample light sources in areas where installing multiple streetlights was considered too expensive.
“For many people, it was the first time they experienced electric lighting,” said Catherine Cordeiro Gabb, a 2016 alum of UT-Austin’s historic preservation graduate program, in an interview with the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s winter 2017 magazine issue. “All of a sudden, you could do things after 7 o’clock in the evening.”
Today, more than a dozen of the moontowers stand, 130 years after they were first constructed. Those lights represent a slice of history and ingenuity, with Austin regarded as home to the last remaining moontowers, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation…