Landmark Tower Company


The Landmark Tower Company was based out of Fort Worth, Texas and founded by Henry “Hank” McGinnis. The company was known for designing and building a distinctive type of radio tower known by the same name. McGinni was an accomplished engineer and the Owner/President of the Landmark Tower Corporation as well as the Owner and General Manager of Landmark Broadcasting Limited. Prior to this McGinnis was the founder and owner of Adelphon Inc. and had previous experience building electric transmission line towers. McGinnis evidently came up with the innovative design while scribbling a Christian symbol of a fish on a napkin.
The prototypical Landmark tower, also known as an Adelphon tower, is a tripod in shape with three legs that rise to meet each other about a third of the way up. The legs taper down from larger footings to a thinner middle and then expand again to the point where they meet. The outer cords continue all the way up to the top of the tower in one swoop, but the inner three loop around into each other, creating a central ovoid and voided core. Aside from its unique appearance, the Landmark tower design has several advantages compared to the typical free standing lattice tower, they have less wind resistance and require a reduced amount of steel for construction.
The most well known example is the Star Tower, located in Cincinnati, Ohio. The individual base leg columns were erected by crane while the upper sections of the tower were built using a Sikorsky S-64 helicopter. Numerous other Landmark towers can found across the United States, including the Mesquite Tower in Mesquite, Texas; the Hughes Memorial Tower in Washington, D.C.; and at a smaller scale, WPXR-TV's analog antenna on Poor Mountain in Virginia and another atop the Energy Plaza skyscraper in downtown Dallas, used by TXU for its communications needs. None are known to have been built outside of the United States. The Landmark Tower Company went bankrupt after its owner and chief design engineer, Hank McGinnis, died from a heart attack in 2002.

List of Landmark towers

TowerYearCountryTownHeight mHeight ftRemarks
Star Tower1991USACincinnati, Ohio291 m954 ftTallest Landmark Tower
Hughes Memorial Tower1989USAWashington, DC232 m761 ftTallest structure in Washington DC
WLLY Tower1995USAMangonia Park, Florida158.2 m519 ft
Mesquite Tower1990USAMesquite, Texas155.3 m509.5 ft
Tower at 1916 Park Avenue<2002USAShreveport, Louisiana152 m499 ft
Tower at 3551 J.R. Lynch Street <1996USAJackson, Mississippi152 m499 ft
Telecourier Communications Tower1989USABloomington, Illinois152 m418 ft
WPXR TV Tower<1996USARoanoke County, Virginia74.5 m244 ftPoor Mountain Tower removed by 2017
Energy Plaza?USADallas, Texas33 m108 ft