Cities: Pride in the Sky

My city’s better than your city. In the Middle Ages, they proved it by erecting the biggest cathedral, in the Renaissance, by commissioning the grandest city hall, in the 19th century, by bolting together the most cavernous railroad station. In the 20th century, cities began putting their pride in the sky and, until lately at least, the sky scraper sufficed as the symbol. Now the high-rise office has an even skinnier cousin, the cloud-busting television tower—generally equipped with a slowly rotating restaurant at the top.

For its TV transmissions, Tokyo duplicated the Eiffel Tower, only 40 ft. higher. Other antennas have risen in Cairo and Teheran. But the erection of TV towers has reached epidemic proportions only in Europe, where local papers breathlessly report every increase in height, meter by meter, as the towers rise.

And how they rise! London, 620 ft. Stuttgart, 702 ft. Dortmund, 715 ft. So much for Rotterdam’s 365-ft.-tall Euro-mast.

If the towers rape the low skyline of cities that have evolved over centuries, who cares? They make such great tourist attractions that a commission of Hamburgers seriously suggested that their tower, now under construction, be designed with a built-in lean to woo tourist dollars away from Pisa. It won’t, but there’s a consolation: in addition to doing the things that other TV towers do—transmitting radio and TV signals and conventional phone calls—it will buzz any motorist equipped with a simple and inexpensive receiver, signaling him to go to a telephone and call his office or his home. Besides, when it is completed a year from now, it will be, at 892 ft., the tallest tower in Germany. That is, until Munich’s 951-ft. tower is finished a few months later. But then. East Berlin will have one 1,185 ft. tall by 1969. West Berlin may counter with a 1,312-footer.

No matter. Moscow’s tower is already taller than the Eiffel Tower, and when it is completed a year from now to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1917 Revolution, it will be 1,722 ft. high, 250 ft. more than the Empire State Building. Muscovites will enjoy dining in its revolving three-story restaurant. Distant viewers will love having TV programs beamed directly from Moscow over the Urals to Vladivostok and Yakutsk. And Aeroflot pilots will be mad about it: with its antenna tips swaying 23 ft. in the wind, it will be the greatest aviation obstacle in Moscow.