What a neat old tower, a real shame we keep losing pieces of history for new development.

When I was a young boy living in Lyndhurst on Park Avenue I would see the lights on this tower blinking at night - every night - as I was going to sleep. The tower was a peaceful sight for me and I am sad to know that it is gone.

Lived in Belleville (the next town over) from the 60s to 77. The early 70s my friends and I would ride our bikes to the huge ITT campus and by the mid 70s we'd drive there and park in one of the many employee lots and party. ITT never seemed to mind kids hanging out or running around their property. No guards, no fence, you could just drive and walk around the place without anyone stopping you. You could walk right up to that tower without a problem. There was a large reflecting pond in front of it. We spent many days there, hanging out and doing what teenagers do. A lot of great childhood memories spent there. I was sad to see it all knocked down.

Wow. thanks for putting this up. I grew up in Belleville and the ITT Tower was an iconic Landmark. I wasn't around when this happened but seeing it now kind of made me feel nostalgic and sad at the same time.

The ITT tower was built in 1947 for microwave experimentation. Without the experiments here, much of what we take for grated today with pagers, cell phones, etc., could not have existed. Nutley was eager to get more property tax rateables, and the property was developed into tacky McMansions. Nobody knew, or cared about the technological ground-breaking that was done there. Yes, the tower was a true work of industrial art, and the fine gentlemen who worked there were the best of the best.

Back in the day.. Seeing it from a distance, i thought it was a tiny airport and that was the watch tower.. oh well

I worked there for 8 years; my Dad for 41. Never got to go up in the tower, though. It was built to test line-of-sight communications between the Empire State building and another location in Long Branch NJ. According to a letter in Weird NJ magazine, people living in the townhouses that were subsequently built on the site occasionally hear mysterious thumps on their roofs...ghosts of those who jumped to their deaths from the tower...

I lived on McKinley St. as a child and remember seeing the blinking red light on the tower every night. Blink...blink...blink...all night long. It was like having your own personal red-eyed giant keeping watch over you. ITT was quite a good citizen in town. Among other generosities, they opened the pool at their private country club so the kids (myself included) could take swimming lessons. It was a real shame when the tower was destroyed. So narrow-minded of the greedy bastards that ran the town - destroy rather than preserve is their motto. The tower was iconic and provided something that made Nutley stand out from Belleville, Bloomfield, Clifton, etc. Not so the cookie-cutter houses and condos that were built on the ITT property. The blasted town didn't even have the foresight to preserve the country club, which was torn down to build even more cheap cookie-cutter condos.

Went up there on a field trip as a kid. Should have been preserved.

It's too bad that was torn down. It would have been such a wicked structure to explore

The tower was a bizarre sight if you didn't know about it ahead of time. What the **** is that?

I feel like I remember seeing that tower when I was younger.

When I first moved up here it was already vacant and there was talk of putting a nightclub up there. How cool would that have been? The view from the top must have been great.

I remember ice skating next to that tower. I was sad the day it came down

I believe that the tower was used for microwave transmission testing. What I remember best about it, and apparently it wasn't there when they did this, was the enormous pond under the tower where we would iceskate and play hockey every winter. Great memories

@robotmuffinz agreed, that would have made for a wicked home. just think of calling in for cable in stall "hey im on the 28th floor of the com tower, i want some satalite tv installed"

Ice skating on the pond

I cant believe they tore that down, it was so cool!

I love old architecture (even though I'm in my 20s), even purely utilitarian buildings such as these were designed with a sense of style. You hardly ever see that anymore in new buildings. Too bad the developers couldn't have incorporated the tower into their development somehow. It was a nice looking building. There wasn't anything wrong with it structurally and it definitely was not an eyesore like other microwave towers, such as the AT&T Long Lines antennas from the old days.

worked there 1985 till july 1992, sorry to see it went down.

You are entitled to your opion.Trouble is the theory that you refer to has been rejected even by NIST.

That would have been a great condo,.....just not there.

I lived in a bordering town and remember the story that a person committed suicide by jumping off the ITT tower.

that sound was the coolest thing

I was there when that happend. Broke in the place before hand with friends. A great biking, skating and rollerblading place. Now its a bunch of cardboard homes passed off as snazzy realestate.

Should have been kept as a monument.

this tower was beautiful..

That's kinda sad. That tower was a landmark most of my life. I miss it.

i would have loved to have lived up there, so cool

I love the username, btw ;)

I was there when it came down, a piece of history gone.

Depending on the area many controlled demolitions are planned to land on the side or go in one direction. buildings/structures must be controlled more accurately to keep from damaging other structures nearby. There was nothing around this tower so it is likely they were trying to make the tower fall on the other part of the building(seen on the left)to cut costs. This kills 2 birds with one stone. It is MUCH harder to implode a building into its own footprint. It is MUCH more expensive as well.

Fire has never caused any steel-framed high-rise building to collapse in any manner, let alone with the vertical precision of Building 7's destruction. 1 Other steel-framed skyscrapers have experienced far more serious fires than Building 7. WTC 7 fell precipitously, at a rate closely approaching the speed of gravitational free-fall. That necessitated the sudden removal of structure near ground level that would have impeded its descent. WTC 7: a standard controlled demolition.

Right into another building!!!

that looked sweet

holy crap

1) WTC 7 was 355 ft from the North tower. How could a gravitational collapse propel debris that far? Gravity does not pull sideways, it pulls straight down. 2) What made steel weighing 8000 lbs go 600' sideways to land on the roof of the Winter Garden? 3) WTC7 was 570 feet tall. Most of the steel beams and columns came down in sections about 30 feet long, conveniently ready to be loaded on trucks. So enough cutter charges had to be used to make the building into sections that small.

Lol, that was the crowd.

it hit the other building if u look, part of it is gone

Sad. That was a neat looking structure, very futuristic, and could have been used for cell phone and LMRS repeaters. It's a shame it was destroyed.

Would of been better if they made it crash entirely into the other buinding (it only crushed a couple foot of the building).

Its called Kinetic ENERGY! You know, the energy an object has from its motion. Imagine now these heavy beams falling ontop of one another, Joints snapping from the pressure, some beams snapping in half other being flung out side ways.

YES JUST LIKE THE TWIN TOWERS

interest how the explosion was hardly noticable and the majority of the tower fell intact.There was even masonary and superstructure there.WTC should have acted more like this surely?

I loved that tower, since I was a kid I remember it. They should have left it DICKS!

I always feel bad for the people that spent hours every week building structures that eventually get scheduled for demolition. I also feel bad for whomever has to clean up the mess after the demolition.

Neato Torpedo!!!

That would have been a great condo,.....just not there. Microwave goodbye!

Is this not what the FBI allegedly tried to do to the WTC building in 1993 with the bombing??

I thought the construct to obvious to be taken as anything but a joke.

how come we dont see the actual explosion in any video shot?

Just like 911

Again i will ask you since you stated : "despite showing all the common physical features of controlled demolitions." How come we didnt hear a constant stream of explosives like we do in other Controlled Demo's? How come the windows were not blown out by these explosives sending shrapnel and glass flying out for 100's of feet hitting people and structures? How come we didnt see the flashing of 100's of explosives going off within a matter of a few seconds?

Was that a person I saw running from the tower ?

YAY!!! NO MORE MICROSOFT!!!

this is airplain 747 is the run way clear for landing .... HELLO?????......oh shit

What makes me a good demoman?

The tower was suppose to go through the entire building...one of the charges went off too early and too late on the other side...causing it to go to the left too much...next question! P.S. i work there

1:53... Notice the blasted apart steel support columns. Does the discolouration look familiar anyone? Using 9/11 physics what would be the best way to bring this tower down? Plant explosives about a third of the way down then watch the tower top drop and crush its own base... thats 9/11 physics in action for you! Impossible? Ill let you decide.

So you admit that it was hit by falling debris. Funny how you left that out of your original statement. Trying to mislead people less informed? Also, from my reading i believe that they admit to not knowing the specifics of how the fire started exactly. Your last statement is stupid. "When steel is hot enough to expand, is it hot enough to sag?" What the hell are the ranting about? Debris damaged the structural integrity of the building along with uncontrolled fires.

er.. yes you do.. are you blind? IT comes in at around 1 and a half minutes in..

@robotmuffinz just wut i was thinking lol it's like shit i'll take that if u dont want it ;)

1) that appears to be Dutch. 2) you brag about your lack of knowledge.

Worst CD ever