SF Sutro Tower Onesie

Sutro Tower is a 299 m (981 ft) three-pronged antenna tower near Clarendon Heights in San Francisco. Rising from a hill between Twin Peaks and Mount Sutro, it is a prominent part of the city skyline and a landmark for city residents and visitors. However, many local people opposed the tower even before it was completed, including criticism of the aesthetic effect the tower would have on the rest of San Francisco. San Francisco writer Herb Caen once wrote, “I keep waiting for it to stalk down the hill and attack the Golden Gate Bridge.”

Before the construction of Sutro Tower, television reception in San Francisco was spotty because the many hills of the city would block the line-of-sight television signal. The great height of the new tower helped with that problem. Transmitters had been scattered throughout the Bay Area, including at San Bruno Mountain, Mt. Allison, Monument Peak, and Mt. Diablo. By having all the main Bay Area television station transmitters in one location, reception was improved by allowing a receiving antenna pointed in a single direction to receive all those stations rather than a subset. However, after the NBC affiliation was transferred to KNTV, that station chose to broadcast from San Bruno Mountain which is five miles south of Sutro Tower. This requires viewers in some locations to reorient their antenna in order to receive the NBC programming.

Discover more about the tower peeking out of SF's fog on our blog.

Proceeds from this shirt go to Young Artists at Work — a multidisciplinary, arts-as-activism residency at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for students between the ages of 14 and 19.