AT&T Long Lines "Oak Hill" Tower, San Jose, CA, 2021.
AT&T Long Lines "Oak Hill" Tower, San Jose, CA, 2021.
AT&T Long Lines "Oak Hill" Tower, San Jose, CA, 2021.
All the pixels, none of the per-minute toll charges, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/51261791084/
#photography
Captured with the Rodenstock 50mm/4.0 HR Digaron-W lens (@ f/4.5) on a Cambo WRS-1600 camera (with about 15mm of vertical shift to preserve the geometry), the Phase One IQ4-150 back (@ ISO 50) in dual exposure mode (which preserves a couple stops of additional dynamic range into the shadows).
The tower's shape is irregular; it tapers slightly.
The wide angle and panoramic orientation give a bit of context, alone on a hill (which is being rapidly encroached by adjacent residential development).
For much of the 20th century, the backbone of the AT&T "Long Lines" long distance telephone network consisted primarily of terrestrial microwave links (rather than copper or fiber cables). Towers with distinctive KS-15676 "horn" antennas could be seen on hilltops and atop switching center buildings across the US; they were simply part of the American landscape.
Most of the relay towers were simple steel structures. This brutalist concrete platform in San Jose was, I believe, of a unique design.
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.
@mattblaze@federate.social
This microwave tower is near me, and I've never known what it was for. Could it be part of that "long lines" network?
@mattblaze@federate.social
the old one and two-story Central Office buildings for phone company equipment were pretty stark.
(unloading those windowless COs was almost as difficult as repurposing abandoned movie theaters with their sloping floors)