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Not Even Past

City Lights: Austin’s Historic Moonlight Towers

Image of the First Electric tower erected in Austin, 41st & Speedway, 1895

Austin’s moonlight towers have long been a distinctive part of the city’s landscape, their lights casting a gentle glow on the streets 150 feet below. Though Austin’s fifteen surviving towers are now the last of their kind, this form of street lighting was once common across the United States. Many cities erected tower lights in the 1880s and 1890s and Austin’s system was modeled closely on Detroit’s, then the most extensive in the world.

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