Limplighters Ball

On the night of September 1, 1978, in the darkened ballroom of the Belvedere Hotel, a capacity crowd was watching a lone couple dancing in the dark. The male of the couple was Walt Lindeman, in his late 80's, and his dancing partner, his daughter. Mr. Lindeman was the last of the hundreds of former lamplighters, who in their era, before the 1950s when they were electrified, went neighborhood to neighborhood, climbing up the lampposts and lighting and extinguishing the gas lamps. When the gas lamps went out so did the era. This was the last dance in remembrance of the last gas-lit lamp in Baltimore.