Sutro Tower is one of my favorite radio towers in the world. The design is unique and beautiful. I have a thing for aviation orange, I guess.
On a purely pragmatic level, Mount Sutro (née Parnassus) is the only place to put radio antennae in San Francisco. They could have built the standard array of 1000' standalone guyed towers, but instead they went to great effort to come up with a distinctive design.
Either way, the tower(s) were going to get built, and would be visible from every point in the city, so I feel lucky that they didn't take the easy way out.
On a purely pragmatic level, Mount Sutro (née Parnassus) is the only place to put radio antennae in San Francisco. They could have built the standard array of 1000' standalone guyed towers, but instead they went to great effort to come up with a distinctive design.
Either way, the tower(s) were going to get built, and would be visible from every point in the city, so I feel lucky that they didn't take the easy way out.