ryanpanos:

Party At The Moon Tower — The Pop-Up City

Austin, Texas is famous for breakfast tacos and Richard Linklater films.  But it also home to a lesser known but equally great phenomenon known as the moonlight tower.  Essentially an infrastructural anachronism, moonlight towers are 50-metre high lighting structures, designed to illuminate several blocks at a time. They were popular in North American cities at the end of the nineteenth century before ubiquitous street lighting existed, as a relatively cheap way of lighting a large city area. A single tower cast light from six carbon arc lamps, illuminating a 460 m radius circle bright enough to read a watch.

The initial construction of these towers was in part a reaction to a local serial killer dubbed the Servant Girl Annihilator, who terrorized Austin between 1885 and 1886. While every other city eventually dismantled their moonlight towers, Austin has made a concerted effort to preserve theirs.  17 of the original 31 still exist and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.