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| Moontower in Zilker Park |
Strange to say, I never noticed
Austin’s moontowers during my two years in grad school at UT. Being a great fan
of Dazed and Confused, I knew exactly
what they were, and even that the movie’s director, Richard Linklater, used Austin
as the setting for his film. I guess I never thought to look up very much while
I was there.
Before flying down for spring
break last month, however, I mentioned the visit to a friend of mine, who began
talking a blue streak about the spindly metallic structures. Between his enthusiastic
explanation of their technology and a thorough perusal of the relevant
Wikipedia Page, I learned just how odd the towers are. Originally relying on
arc lights, a form of electrical lighting that predated the incandescent light
bulb, several cities built the towers to illuminate whole neighborhoods. Those that
Austin put up, which the city acquired from Detroit, rise 165 feet high –
imagine looking up at their striking glow in the 1890s, before light
bulbs even featured in domestic settings.
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| Chicon and MLK. |
The towers became obsolete
quickly, presumably after streetlights became commonplace. They were
so bright that they must have become a nuisance to the people living beneath
after the initial excitement wore off; the glow stayed on all night. Austin,
which originally built 31 towers, took down fourteen and eventually moved all
but six. Still, they achieved listing as historic landmarks in 1970 and have
steadily gained appreciation in the decades since. The timing of their
recognition, in the midst of Austin’s metamorphosis into a center of
counterculture and general weirdness, seems appropriate.
Moontowers became part of popular
culture’s vernacular due to a memorable party scene set at the base of a tower (specially
built for the movie, alas) in Dazed and
Confused. Early on in the movie, a much anticipated house party is spoiled
by a suspicious father. After several hours of cruising the town’s strips and
pool halls, Wooderson, played by Matthew McConaughey in his archetypal role,
rolls up in his car, the Melba Toast, to announce the party at the moontower to
an intrigued, bookish female. “I love them redheads,” he intones with wonderful
insouciance as he turns away, much to the disgust of her companions. Later on,
after the keg is well on its way to being tapped, several upperclassmen take
the movie’s freshman protagonist along with them as they climb to the top of
the moontower.
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| Guadalupe and 9th. There's the state capitol to the right. |
With my mind on the moontowers, I
saw them everywhere on my recent visit. They’re all close to downtown, seeing
as Austin was a small city in the 1890s when they were built. There’s one right
in the middle of Zilker Park, where my host Tom and I tried to go swimming at
Barton Springs (closed for cleaning; we repaired to Deep Eddy Pool). One
cropped up just south of where I used to live in the Cherrywood Neighborhood.
And one afternoon, when Tom, Lynda and I went to the top of a parking garage
for a city view as part of the Servant Girl Annihilator Tour (don’t ask), we
came practically face to face with one on West Twelfth. The handful that remain
are like prehistoric beasts, lonely and somewhat ignored, at least in
day-to-day existence, but shining on despite their irrelevance to the modern
city.
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| Looking towards the Hill Country. I believe the the moontower visible is at West 12th and Blanco. |
