Moonlight Tower

Moonlight Tower

Moonlight towers are lighting structures designed to illuminate areas of a city at night.

The structures were popular in the late 19th century in cities across the United States and Europe; they were most common in the 1880s-1890s. In some places they were used when standard street-lighting systems — using smaller, shorter, and more numerous lamps — were impractically expensive. Other times they were used in addition to existing gas street lighting. The towers were designed to illuminate areas often of several blocks at once. Arc lamps were the most common method of illumination, known for their exceptionally bright and harsh light.

As incandescent electric street lighting became common, the prevalence of moonlight tower systems began to wane.

Read more about Moonlight Tower:  Moonlight Towers in Austin, Texas, Detroit, New Orleans, San Jose, California

Famous quotes containing the words moonlight and/or tower:

    “I have said no
    To everything, in order to get at myself.
    I have wiped away moonlight like mud....”
    Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

    Culture is a sham if it is only a sort of Gothic front put on an iron building—like Tower Bridge—or a classical front put on a steel frame—like the Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street. Culture, if it is to be a real thing and a holy thing, must be the product of what we actually do for a living—not something added, like sugar on a pill.
    Eric Gill (1882–1940)