Shukhov Tower

Near the television center on Shabolovka, on the street named after him, stands a lattice steel mast that once served for radio and television broadcasting — the Shukhov Tower, a monument of Soviet rationalism. It was built in 1919–1922 by engineer Vladimir Shukhov based on his principle of hyperboloid lattice structures. The structure was a technical breakthrough of the early Soviet era, and its fate still sparks debate over the preservation of engineering landmarks.

Back in the 1890s, Shukhov invented lattice-shell structures inspired by basket weaving and patented the hyperboloid tower — a surface made of straight rods. The first such tower was built for the 1896 exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod and survives on the Polibino estate. On 30 July 1919, Lenin ordered the urgent construction of a powerful radio station in Moscow, and the commission went to Shukhov’s bureau. Due to a shortage of metal, the original design — 350 meters tall and weighing 2,200 tons, taller yet four times lighter than the Eiffel Tower — was reduced to 148.5 meters and 240 tons; Lenin personally approved the revised version.

The tower was erected without scaffolding or cranes: six hyperboloid sections were assembled one inside another on the ground and then raised telescopically using wooden winches. In 1921, while lifting the fourth tier, a cable snapped, the structure fell from a height of 75 meters and damaged two more assembled sections; Shukhov was accused of sabotage and sentenced to a suspended death sentence, deferred until the construction was completed. It was later established that the cause was metal fatigue, and the charges were dropped. The final section was secured on 14 February 1922.

On 19 March 1922, radio broadcasting began from the tower: in power it surpassed the stations of Paris, New York, and Berlin. In 1927 a more powerful transmitter was installed on it — the second Comintern radio station — and from 1937 experimental television broadcasts began; in 1939 the first official television broadcast in the USSR took place. In November 1941, as German forces approached Moscow, orders were given to blow up the mined tower, but Alexander Shchetinin, head of the television relay station, disobeyed the order at the risk of execution and waited out the enemy’s retreat. Until the Ostankino Tower was built in 1967, the structure was the tallest in the country and became a symbol of Soviet television.

The tower has never undergone a complete restoration, and the encasing of the support joints in concrete in 1971 disrupted its originally mobile structure and increased corrosion. In 2014, officials proposed dismantling the deteriorating tower and relocating it, but the plan was opposed by architects of world renown — Rem Koolhaas, Tadao Ando, and others — and in a public poll 90% of Muscovites spoke in favor of preserving the monument in place. The dismantling was abandoned, partial anti-corrosion treatment was carried out, and the structure was reinforced from within, though a full-scale restoration had still not begun by the early 2020s.

Today the tower, listed in the Arkhnadzor Red Book as an at-risk structure, remains a monument of engineering thought and one of the world’s first lattice hyperboloid structures of this scale. It is no longer used for broadcasting, but it belongs to the Russian Television and Radio Broadcasting Network (RTRS) and carries cellular antennas, remaining a silhouette of Shabolovka and a reminder of the bold engineering solutions of the early 20th century.