The Newton/Needham Towers

One of the remarkable features of eastern Massachusetts' topography is the way some landmarks pop in and out of sight at surprising distances. The Prudential Tower is like that, even more so than the nearby John Hancock Tower; the Pru can be seen from a number of directions at distances exceeding ten miles. To the dedicated tower hunter, however, the Pru is just a rather unattractive office building with an antenna on top; the Main Event is ten miles to the southwest, in the wealthy suburbs of Needham and Newton. Along Route 128 (now officially I-95 but nobody calls it that), between Route 9 and Highland Avenue stand four tall towers that represent the closest thing in the Boston market to a “tower farm”. It's not quite Roxborough, and not even remotely in the same class as South Mountain or Cedar Hill, but property values being what they are, we can't complain. Like the Pru, these towers appear above the horizon from quite a distance away; as this photo gallery begins, we are heading east on Route 9 watching the first of our quarry pop up over the next hill.

The story of the Newton/Needham towers begins in 1954, a few years before the first of these towers was built. On August 31st of that year, Hurricane Carol battered the Boston area. WBZ-TV's original 680-foot self-supporting tower collapsed on top of Channel 4's Brighton studio building and across Soldiers Field Road into nearby parkland. Luckily, no one was injured. While Channel 4 was able to get back on the air relatively quickly—by establishing temporary facilities at the WNAC-TV tower in Malden—the search was on for a more effective, permanent new tower location.

In 1957, Westinghouse completed the first of the Newton/Needham towers, and the only one of the four to be located west of Route 128. The new WBZ-TV tower would be located at 350 Cedar St. in Needham. Channel 4 was joined on the tower by its newly re-established sister station, WBZ-FM, on 106.7. Later, public broadcaster WGBH-TV (channel 2) and new ABC affiliate WCVB (channel 5) would join the party. As originally constructed, the WBZ-TV tower was just under 1,200 feet tall, giving its top an altitude above sea level of 1,352 feet. With the advent of digital TV in the late 1990s, the top of the tower was extensively reconstructed to support the additional antennas required; it is now almost 1,300 feet tall, 1,449 feet above sea level, making it the most prominent of the four towers by a long shot.

Later that year—the FCC puts the date at a reassuringly precise November 13th—the Boston Herald-Traveler newspaper constructed a tower of its own, in Newton Upper Falls not far from Channel 4, overlooking Route 128. The Herald-Traveler already owned WHDH radio (AM 850 and FM 94.5), and built the tower to serve its brand-new television station on channel 5. The new tower was just barely taller than the channel 4 tower, at 1,250 feet, or 1,349 feet above sea level. When WHDH-TV lost its license in 1972, the Herald-Traveler spitefully refused to sell its equipment or even lease space on the tower to the new channel 5 licensee. The tower was sold to Sconnix along with the former WHDH-FM in the late 1970s, and eventually ended up in the hands of Steve Dodge's American Tower. It is now commonly known as “FM-128” for its proximity to the highway, and in recent years has finally seen some television service return with WBPX (68/32 Boston) and WYDN (48/47 Worcester) locating their digital facilities here.

With both of Boston's other commercial stations on the air from Needham, WNAC-TV (the old channel 7) soon discovered the inadequacy of its Malden transmitter site, and made plans to construct a new tower in Newton Highlands off Needham St. It is the only one of the four towers which is self-supporting, and owing to the economics of such towers it is the shortest as well, topping out at 1,062 feet (1,170 feet above sea level). Unlike the situation with channel 5, when RKO General lost the channel 7 license, parent company General Tire and Rubber wasted no time in selling the facilities of WNAC-TV to the new licensee, New England Television. When NE-TV sold channel 7 to Ed Ansin in the early 1990s, the tower and real estate came with, so it is now owned by WHDH, Inc. At some point, former sister FM WROR (98.5) decamped down the street to FM-128. Channel 7's various owners (both old and new license) have never leased space on the tower to other broadcasters, and today it is the only single-station tower in the Newton/Needham complex.

The last tower to be built was completed in mid-1968, and is located back on the Needham side of the Charles River, overlooking Route 128's Highland Ave. interchange and the Sheraton Needham Hotel. We call it the “UHF Candelabra”, for obvious reasons; officially, owner American Tower calls it “NEEDHAM1MA”. The UHF Candelabra was originally built for WSBK-TV (channel 38, moving from the Prudential Tower after just three years), WKBG-TV (channel 56, moving from Zion Hill, Woburn), and a new construction permit, WREP-TV on channel 25. WREP was never built, but the tine of the candelabra originally reserved for channel 25 was ultimately used when WXNE-TV signed on in 1977. The UHF Candelabra is precisely 1,200 feet tall, topping out at 1,346 feet above sea level (according to FCC records).

Of course, with all the tall steel in the area, Newton and Needham also proved an excellent location for TV studios and other facilities which needed a good microwave line of sight to somewhere. WCVB has always been located in Needham, overlooking Route 128 and practically in the shadow of the old channel 5 tower as well as the channel 4 tower used by WCVB. NESN, the Red Sox– and Bruins-owned cable sports network, has its satellite uplink facility on the same hill as the UHF Candelabra. NECN, the Comcast– and WCVB-owned cable news network, has its studios on Wells Ave. in Newton about a mile away—and Worcester-licensed Univision affiliate WUNI has long had its studios in very office park in which the UHF Candelabra is located.

Note to readers: I have called the WBZ-TV tower the “CBS tower” throughout this essay. However, when these photographs were originally taken in 2003, WBZ-TV's owner was called Viacom. Although the ownership of the station has not changed, using the current name, CBS, is an anachronism. The expository text has also been updated in other places to reflect 2007 conditions, but this has not been done systematically or throughout.

Text and photos by Garrett Wollman. Based on original text and research by Scott Fybush.