Blights on the Landscape

The other day I ran into my friend Larry the Art Professor in front of the Visual Arts Center (VAC) at Davidson College. The radio station where I work is just up the street. A couple of days earlier I had received a phone call from the secretary in the art department asking whether we had installed a new antenna on top of the VAC. "We installed one about four years ago," I said. "It's a microwave dish for our studio-transmitter link." I had to admit that I had never actually seen it, though I had walked past hundreds of times. I said that if there was another, more visible, antenna that appeared recently, it must belong to someone else.

When I ran into Larry, I said something light hearted about antennas on the VAC. He seemed unamused. He pointed to the building. "That has no place on this building," he said, pointing toward the rearmost of three large circular objects on the roof. Straining my eyes, I finally saw it: a microwave dish perhaps one meter in diameter just peeking out over the rim of the circular structure. It was ours, I had to concede.

I pointed out, though, that the dish had been there for some four years before he himself saw it. "Beside the point," he snapped. "You should take it down." I told him that if we took it down we'd go off the air." He seemed unpersuaded, and still more annoyed. "People think that architecture isn't art," he said. "Would you put an antenna on top of our Rodin?" I said of course not, but the cases didn't seem comparable. The antenna on the VAC was barely visible, to the point that most people -- including Larry until a few days earlier -- had never seen it.

"Put it on top of your own building," Larry said. We can't do that, of course. We would have to build a 75 foot tower next to the building, a true eyesore. But this didn't cut it with Larry. The VAC, he told me, is a piece of architecture, designed by a world reknowned architect. Whereas our building is just, well, a house designed to look like the other houses on that rather historic street. The architect isn't world reknowned. Who cares what happens to, or near, such a building? (Tut tut. Are we being just a tad elitist?) I pointed out to Larry that antennas are so ubiquitous that one finds them bristling from the crowns of tall buildings everywhere, those that are considered landmarks of architecture as well as more prosaic structures. He was unconvinced. "Antennas on fine buildings are designed to complement the architectural elements of the building," he told me. Sure they are, when they can be. When that's not feasible, though, the antennas still go up. Our modern world demands them, can't live without them.

The irony of all this is that Larry and I are on the same side, philosophically. I hate what has happened to the landscape. There is no direction you can turn without seeing some kind of antenna. I remember well how communities first reacted when cell phone towers started sprouting everywhere. They were outraged. But you can't walk around with a cell phone planted in your ear without a bunch of towers around to transmit your calls. In the end, people wanted their cell phones -- and all the other wireless appurtenances of modern life -- more than they cared about their views.

But at a certain point I've got to say, "Come on, people, get a life." If you're going to get all exercised over an antenna, at least make it one that the average person can see with the naked eye. OK? A sense of humor wouldn't hurt, either. I mean, you might at least consider an antenna for the Rodin. It might improve cell phone reception, or wireless computer connections, in the building. That's what the students really care about, you know.