Landmark Tower Company

Star Tower, the tallest Landmark tower to be built

Hughes Memorial Tower, the tallest structure in Washington DC

another example of the landmark tower design as seen from underneath

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

Tower	Year	Country	Town	Height m	Height ft	Remarks
Star Tower	1991	USA	Cincinnati, Ohio	291 m	954 ft	Tallest Landmark Tower
Hughes Memorial Tower	1989	USA	Washington, DC	232 m	761 ft	Tallest structure in Washington DC
WLLY Tower	1995	USA	Mangonia Park, Florida	158.2 m	519 ft
Mesquite Tower	1990	USA	Mesquite, Texas	155.3 m	509.5 ft
Cumulus Media Tower	<2002	USA	Shreveport, Louisiana	152 m	499 ft
Tower at 3551 J.R. Lynch Street (Extension)	<1996	USA	Jackson, Mississippi	152 m	499 ft
Telecourier Communications Tower	1989	USA	Bloomington, Illinois	152 m	418 ft
WPXR TV Tower	<1996	USA	Roanoke County, Virginia	74.5 m	244 ft	Poor Mountain Tower removed by 2017
Energy Plaza	?	USA	Dallas, Texas	33 m	108 ft