AT&T Long Lines "Oak Hill" Tower, San Jose, CA, 2021.
All the pixels, none of the microwave energy, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/51261791084/
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this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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The San Jose Oak Hill Tower is unique in a number of ways. This particular concrete brutalist design appears not to have been used anywhere else; it seems to have been site-specific. It sits atop an underground switching center (that was partly used for a military contract), which explains the relatively hardened design.
Today the underground switch is still there, owned by AT&T, but the tower space is leased to land mobile and cellular providers. The old horn antennas at top are disconnected.
With a few exceptions (mostly towers atop downtown switching offices in populated areas), no one was trying to make any of this utilitarian communications infrastructure beautiful. It was form strictly following function, built to be reliable and rugged.
But there was, I think, quite a bit of beauty to find in it. I wonder if we'll look at our current neighborhood cellular towers, now often regarded as a visual blight, the same way decades after they're (inevitably) also gone.
@mattblaze@federate.social Depends who's photographing them and how.
@mattblaze@federate.social The switching offices were designed to blend with the urban landscape. E.g. (one that I've been in, even though it's Bell Canada and not AT&T): https://maps.app.goo.gl/Skb1YiARSSZK15hz8
(I've also seen one in downtown Palo Alto but can't remember the exact location).
@mattblaze@federate.social
I think there might be a similar tower in Norway, south of Stavanger - NATO building of some sort associated, IIRC. I never got a good view (other people were driving), so I am not certain.