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In and around downtown Austin are 31 electric light towers that were acquired from the city of Detroit in 1894. In Austin, we call them the Moonlight Towers. There is a Moonlight Tower Comedy Festival named in their honor.
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Their origins began when the serial killings of 1885 took place. One of the ways to stop the mass murdering was to illuminate the city. Like light rail getting to Austin, it would take many years before there was actually an illuminated downtown Austin. As partial payment for the towers, Austin traded a narrow Gage railroad that had been built to transport granite to the construction site of the Colorado River dam. The towers began electrifying the city with light just after 1895, when the dam construction was completed. The lights have remained in nearly continuous operation for over 100 years. They have been turned off only twice. They were turned off for a week in 1905 because of a dispute between the City Council and the Water and Light Commission. The next time their lights were dimmed was in 1973. They were turned off briefly in a response to the national energy crisis.
The unique style of lighting was very popular in cities throughout the United States in the last quarter of the 19th century.
With 17 of the towers still in operation, Austin is the only city that has retained these charming reminders of an age gone by. The surviving towers are located at:
