Official name: AT&T Madison Complex Tandem Office Also known as: AT&T Switching Station Formerly: SBC Tower Formerly: Pacific Bell Tower Formerly: Pacific Telephone Tower Built: 1961 Designed by: John B. Parkinson and Donald D. Parkinson Type: Tower Stories: 17 Maximum Height: 448 feet / 137 meters Location: 420 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles, United States
M ost American cities have at least one, if not more, antiquated telephone switching buildings in their downtown cores. These structures serve as a reminder that not all that long ago we relied on piles of electromechanical equipment in windowless buildings with microwave towers soaring high above to keep connected with family and friends.
For a number of reasons these days the old buildings are bypassed by fancy fiber optics and carrier hotels, but their microwave towers still stretch into the sky reminding us of a time when the world wide web was science fiction and not a gadget in our pockets.
The AT&T tower in downtown Los Angeles is one of the better preserved, and better looking of these relics. Its towers starts off as a solid four-sided rectangle, but gracefully unfolds as it gains height into an eight-sided platform for two levels of microwave horns. A much more complicated version of this architectural origami is performed at the building's roof where the middle of the platform has 52 sides as it transitions from one solid square into a catwalk lattice.
