[BC] Buildings that look like old radios

[Dan Strassberg]

Last evening, PBS (or at least WGBH-TV here) ran a program on buildings
built to look like all sorts of objects from everyday life. My favorite, I
think, is the Illinois water tower that looks like a ketchup bottle.
However, there were many other examples and even an interview with the
creator of the Zippy comic strip, which daily celebrates this genre of
architectural oddities. It seems to me that Scott Fybush once remarked that
the transmitter building of one of the Rochester AMs evoked a table radio of
the 30s/40s era (1460? If so, the building is probably gone --or is about to
be gone--because 1460 lost its site and has a CP--or maybe by now a license
to cover--for a diplex with nearby 1280). But evoking is different from
reproducing the real thing many times larger than life-size. My question is
whether anyone knows of a radio-station building that was built as a WAY
larger-than-life-size model of an old tube-type tabletop radio. If so, does
the building still exist? What is its current state of repair? What it its
current use? Depending on location and accessibility, such a building could
be absolutely the best home I can imagine for a radio museum. And when I say
radio museum, I don't mean just a museum of antique receivers, I mean a
museum of receivers and broadcast equipment. In fact, the building wouldn't
have to already exist for such a museum to be designed around it. Given a
sympathetic zoning board and enough money, it could probably be built
somewhere. Many old table radios were basically rectangular boxes. So the
construction would not have to be as unusual as that of a building designed
to look like a duck, an orange, or a hot dog on a roll. Those are only a few
examples from last evening's PBS show.

--
Dan Strassberg, dan.strassberg at att.net
eFax 707-215-6367