Sutro Tower

Sutro Tower

Sutro Tower is a special three-legged TV and radio lattice tower in San Francisco, California. It is very tall, at 297.8 metres (977 feet), and is a famous part of the city's skyline. The tower was built in 1973 and was the tallest building in San Francisco until the Salesforce Tower was built in 2018.

The tower is named after Mount Sutro. A man named Adolph Gilbert Sutro, who was related to an old mayor of San Francisco, once had a big house on the land where the tower now stands. Later, a company bought the land and used it for their TV station. Several TV stations worked together to build and take care of the tower.

From the ground, the tower rises 297.8 metres (977 feet). Because it is on a hill, it is even taller above the sea—about 552 metres (1,811 feet). Even though it is not the tallest building when you measure from the ground to the top, its high place on the hill lets it look down on all the tall buildings in the city's center.

History

Before Sutro Tower was built in 1973, watching TV in San Francisco was hard because the city's hills blocked the signal. The tall tower helped fix this problem. Before, TV signals came from different places around the Bay Area, such as San Bruno Mountain, Mt. Allison, Monument Peak, and Mt. Diablo. Putting all the main TV station signals in one spot made it easier for people to get good TV reception.

Some local people did not like the tower before it was finished, saying it would not look nice in San Francisco. A writer named Herb Caen joked about the tower. When the tower was first built, its legs were lit up at night with bright white lights, but people complained, so the lights were turned off. Even though some people were unhappy at first, many now see Sutro Tower as an important symbol of the Bay Area. It appears as a logo in a local entertainment guide called SF Station and in the art game SFZero. In 2022, Sutro Tower was featured in the video game Horizon Forbidden West as a famous landmark in San Francisco.

Starting in 2019, one part of the tower was taken down temporarily to add new antennas for the FCC spectrum repacking. The new antennas were finished on May 1, 2020. Some TV stations used smaller antennas during a short cleanup period between mid-July and mid-August.

Construction

Construction of Sutro Tower began in 1971 by Kline Towers from Columbia, South Carolina. The tower finished in 1973, and its first broadcasts happened on July 4, 1973. The tower’s strong base uses about 3,750 m³ of concrete and weighs 1,700 tons. It is built to stay steady during earthquakes by having most of its weight deep underground.

Sutro Tower sends out signals for ten TV stations and four FM radio stations, helping people in the area watch and listen to their favorite shows. It is owned by a nonprofit group made up of four big TV stations in San Francisco: KTVU, KRON-TV, KPIX, and KGO-TV. The tower also rents space to other stations, like KQED, KOFY-TV, KPJK, and KPYX. After a big change in 2016, KQEH in San Jose also started using Sutro Tower in 2018.

Access

The Sutro Tower can only be reached by special vehicles and is not open to the public. But the area around the tower has great views of San Francisco. There is a small platform near the top, very high above the ground. Only workers can go up the tower using a tiny elevator inside one of its legs.

On clear days, you can see the tower from far away, especially from the East Bay peaks of Mount Diablo. Sometimes, when fog covers the city, the tower is the only part of San Francisco that can be seen.

Stations

Television

Sutro Tower helps many TV stations send out their signals. These stations sometimes have extra channels on the same frequency. You can learn more about these extra channels by following the digital channels link.

Radio

Several FM radio stations send out their signals from Sutro Tower. These include KEXC (Formerly KREV) at 92.7, KOIT at 96.5, KSOL at 98.9, KOSF at 103.7, and KNBR-FM at 104.5.