The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design

by Roman Mars

Hyde Park Obelisk

23 and 24 Leinster Gardens, situated right in the middle of a row of historic homes in a posh neighborhood. Here, however, route developers saw a site-specific opportunity. Instead of leaving a gaping ventilation hole in the ground, which would not go over well in upmarket Bayswater, a facade was erected at the Leinster Gardens site to match the adjacent mid-Victorian houses. Largely indistinguishable from the neighboring buildings, with fluted Corinthian columns flanking a grand front entrance and balustraded balconies cantilevering out above, it looks like a house, but this grand display is only about a foot deep.

Larson debuted their first faux tree towers in 1992, just a few years before the legal landscape around cell towers underwent a big shift.

Some new towers were hidden entirely out of sight inside of tall architectural elements, like the steeples of churches, while others were integrated with structures like water towers or flagpoles that were either extant or purpose-built to serve as part of the disguise. Still, there were many places where these kinds of obvious human artifacts would stand out, so the idea of cell towers looking like trees really began to take root.