Cell Towers Alter Rooflines

As pay phones disappear from city streets, cell phone towers are topping buildings. Here's one array on an apartment building near City Hall.

This one may be very useful as we all rely more on cell phones, but it looks way out of place on top of the Masonic Building, clashing with the distinctive sculpted shell trim.

The detritus of past technologies, including old television antennas, can still be seen all over the city even as buildings become more and more festooned with small satellite dishes and garlands of cable wire. Nobody seems to clear out the old stuff before adding the new contraptions.

Even air conditioners become redundant when through-the-wall ones fail and people stick new ones in the windows. When will the accumulation of tech-dreck end?

--Bernice Paglia