The skyline of Milwaukee will soon undergo profound change.

I’m not talking about the completion of The Couture or 333 North Water. And I’m not talking about the exterior remodeling of Northwestern Mutual’s North Tower.

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No, I’m talking about the disappearance from the skyline of Downtown Milwaukee’s highest-rising structure – and that’s NOT the U.S. Bank Building, which at 600 feet is the city’s tallest building.

According to a recent FCC filing, it appears that the transmission tower and antenna perched atop the 274-foot Hilton Milwaukee City Center, 509 W. Wisconsin Ave. – the tip of which is 677 feet above the sidewalk below – is on its way to being decommissioned.

That means the tower, installed in 1953, will be removed.

"They have been working for several years to remove the tower," confirmed Marcus Corporation Archivist Leslie Heinrichs. "The plan is that it will be down by late spring/early summer."

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At the moment, according to FCCdata.org, the tower has three transmitters / translators installed. Bustos Media’s WDDW La Gran D FM translator is 193 meters up, and El Sol Broadcasting has two FM translators 172 and 175 meters in the sky.

WDJT-TV transmitters were also mounted on the structure, but have since moved to a new tower in Lincoln Park.

A Dec. 28, 2023 FCC filing by Bustos proposed moving the translator – which rebroadcasts WDDW-FM – to the U.S. Bank Building, 777 E. Wisconsin Ave., “due to the decommissioning of the tower on the Hilton Building.”

El Sol Broadcasting has also filed for approval to move its equipment for FM 97.7 and 102.5 off the tower, according to owner John Torres.

Both radio companies using the tower are expected to move their equipment to a new pole being added to the U.S. Bank Building by the end of the month, an industry source told me.

El Sol's Torres thinks the removal will take a little longer than expected.

"(It) won't be until later in year," he wrote in an email. "(It) takes special equipment to bring it down in sections. I have filed for the move; waiting on the FCC approval."

As of midday Friday, Jan. 5, no permit had been filed with the city to make alterations to the Hilton building, a permit that Department of City Development staffers said would typically be required.

"A party that is dismantling an ASR-registered tower is not required to seek prior approval from the FCC, but is required to provide notification of the dismantlement afterwards," said FCC Deputy Director of Media Relations Will Wiquist.

However, when the tower is removed, for the first time in just a tad over 70 years, Milwaukee’s skyline be without the soaring tower and antenna.

The antenna was completed in early September 1953 and has been a fixture of the Milwaukee cityscape ever since.

The history of the tower

The history of the tower begins earlier in 1953, when WCAN-TV received approval to become the second television station to go on air in Milwaukee, following the then-Milwaukee Journal-owned WTMJ-TV, which debuted in 1947.

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The reason for the six-year gap was an FCC freeze on new television stations, which expired in spring of 1952. At that point there were 108 stations broadcasting in 65 cities across the country, according to contemporary newspaper reports.

Pent-up demand during the freeze meant that when the ban was lifted, applications flooded in. About 250 construction permits were authorized during the remainder of 1952 and the first month of '53, though only a few had actually gotten on the air in that time.

Another 750 or so applications were pending and all but about 150 of those were stymied by conflicts of interest that needed resolving before approvals could be made, according to a February 1953 Milwaukee Journal article.

All of this created a huge market for companies making televisions and antennas, as well as TV and antenna installers and repairmen, though at this point, nearly all stations were on VHF channels (2-13).

In March 1953, two Wisconsin senators (one named McCarthy) and four congressmen wrote a letter to the FCC urging another commercial station for Milwaukee –  “to which a great community of this size is so eminently entitled,” they noted – and suggesting that UHF channels (14 and up) be reserved for non-commercial, educational television.

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An exception to the latter, however, would be WCAN-TV, which had just received approval to broadcast on channel 25 in Milwaukee.

In fact, the FCC had allocated six TV channels to the city – one already home to WTMJ and another soon to broadcast WCAN. There was at least one application seeking each of the other four spots.

WCAN-TV was owned by a group led by Louis Poller, of Chester, Pennsylvania, who already owned WCAN radio in Milwaukee, along with other stations elsewhere, and had an interesting backstory.

The young Poller was attending a theological seminary but left at age 16 to take a job as a sports cartoonist and artist at the Scranton Republican newspaper, the Sentinel recounted in 1953.

Still 16, he also hit the airwaves as a sportscaster doing play-by-play of local of local football, bowling and boxing competition for WGBI, the Scranton CBS affiliate.

By 1942, Poller built his first radio station, Scranton’s WARM. That same year, however, he put his radio career on hold and joined the Marines, in which he served through the end of World War II.

But then he was right back at it, opening WPWA in Chester, Pennsylvania in 1947 and buying WARL in Arlington, Virginia in 1951 and WCAN  in Milwaukee in 1952.

Deciding to move into television, Poller chose Milwaukee and opted to take an arguably ill-advised route, choosing UHF for WCAN-TV.

Since American televisions were made for VHF, TV owners would need not only a new UHF antenna, but also a converter for their television set, or a new television set that could receive both VHF and UHF signals.

Some estimates for the converter ran as high as $75, though ads in Milwaukee newspapers were quickly offering $15 solutions. UHF antennas were estimated to cost $25 to $35. These were not inexpensive options at the time.

But, Poller was determined.

“His primary purpose is to make WCAN-TV a model UHF station for the entire country and his efforts in that direction have already attracted national attention in the industry,” wrote the Sentinel. “He is out to prove that UHF television is not only here to stay, but going places.”

That’s why, sensing an even worse-case scenario, Poller went on the offensive.

UHF broadcast signals are more directional than VHF ones, which means if UHF stations scatter their transmitters around town, viewers could require multiple UHF antennas, or a UHF antenna on a rotating device to aim the antenna at the desired channel’s tower.

So, at the very beginning, Poller suggested that UHF broadcasters get together and share a single tower. However, with no other stations anywhere near ready, Poller went ahead and built his own.

At first, he planned to use the 700-foot WCAN radio tower in Hales Corners for his TV transmitter, but later decided on a more central location. But news of that site wouldn’t be released for a few months.

In the meantime, the politicians who wrote to the FCC declared that WCAN was “mild relief” to the “current VHF monopoly,” the Sentinel noted.

While Poller hoped to get his new station on air by mid-June, that proved excessively optimistic.

In fact, it wasn’t until around that time that equipment was being installed in the WCAN studios, located in the Towne Hotel, 723 N. 3rd St., Downtown, replacing the radio station studios that were moved to the site of the tower in Hales Corners.

“At the studio work is nearing completion,” the Journal reported on June 18. “A master control room already has 17,000 feet of cable installed. The station also has a compact studio which includes facilities for a kitchen which can be televised for cooking programs. It has a switchboard for studio lighting and a prop room. Poller said local shows which require larger space will be televised from movie houses which have been closed.”

In the same update, the newspaper noted that, “Poller said the steel tower also was on hand and is being painted on the ground. He said the tower and transmitter equipment would be installed simultaneously, possibly within 10 days. The tower will go on top of a downtown building which Poller was not yet ready to name, pending completion of contract signing.”

Adler Communications Laboratory of New Rochelle, New York was the general contractor for construction of new station, which had inked a deal with AT&T to use one of its two microwave relay systems in Chicago to get its network content.

Poller was also assembling a team, which included assistant GM Elmer Jaspin, who had come from a station in Philadelphia, and Dr. Adolph A. Suppan of Milwaukee’s Wisconsin State College, whose job was to oversee educational and public service programs. Dean McCarthy former director of TV for National Council of Catholic Men in Washington, D.C., was hired as producer-director to manage sports programming.

Poller, who was company president, was also the general manager.

And within a few weeks, he’d pay $72,387 to acquire an additional 28 1/3 percent interest in the station, buying nearly all the stock owned by former GM, Alex Rosenman. Poller now owned just under 62 percent of the company.

In mid-July, the contract for the tower location was signed and the new was announced to the media and to newspaper readers with a full-page ad featuring a rendering of the tower atop its home: the Schroeder Hotel (later the Marc Plaza and now the Hilton).

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The new tower, which was expected to, “send programs 50 miles in all directions,” according to the Sentinel, was to be 395 feet tall with a 47-foot antenna atop that. Both would be perched 25 stories up on the roof of the Schroeder, on an eight-foot base located between the hotel’s two penthouses, with the north penthouse housing the equipment.

Poller told reporters that the tower would cost $100,000. The steel was being fabricated by Milwaukee’s Worden-Allen Co., with that company’s VP Emil Abendroth serving as design engineer.

The tower was designed to withstand 140-mile winds, “even when the tower is coated with ice ... (a) double safety factor required by good engineering practice,” Poller said.

The steel had been delivered back in June and by mid-August it had all been lifted up to the roof.

As construction proceeded, Poller and CBS’ VP in charge of station regulations Herbert Akerberg announced that WCAN would be the city’s CBS affiliate and, thus, the only station in Milwaukee that would air popular shows like “I Love Lucy” and “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts.”

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Other CBS shows expected to air here included "See It Now,” “The Web,” “Danger,” “Studio One,” “Godfrey’s Talent Scouts,” “Perry Como,” “I’ve Got a Secret,” “Topper,” “My Friend Irma,” “Beat the Clock,” “Medallion Theater,” “Burns and Allen,” “Fred Waring,” “Jackie Gleason” and “Our Miss Brooks.”

However, some CBS programs that were airing on WTMJ would stay put, including “Big Town,” “Meet Mr. McNutley,” “Pabst Blue Ribbon Bouts" (boxing), “Revlon Theater" (which started out on NBC in June 1953 before moving to CBS in Sept. 1953) and “Schlitz Playhouse of the Stars.”

There would also be local programming, including Marquette football coach Lisle Blackbourn’s 15-minute weekly show and Badgers football games.

The on-air launch – which was to start with a few days of test patterns and then an abbreviated schedule of programs before a full schedule kicked in soon after – was postponed at least three times as tower work continued.

Heavy rains at the end of August didn’t help the schedule and on Aug. 31, work had to stop because of the rain.

But weather must have been good the next day because that’s when Sentinel photographer Clarence Leino scaled the tower to its highest point at that stage. The next day, the paper published a trio of striking photos, including one looking straight down to the street below.

“My school teachers told me I’d never get up in the world,” Leino wrote. “But Tuesday afternoon I fooled them. Here I am higher up in the world that anybody in Milwaukee – 565 feet above the ground – on top of the almost completed WCAN-TV tower on the roof of the Schroeder Hotel.

“This is the tallest spot in downtown Milwaukee. The roof of the hotel its 275 from street level and the tower as it is today, is 290 feet. When completed the tower will be 340 feet high with a 47 foot antenna on top of that – a total of 662 feet (note: this number conflicts with other sources).

“In the picture above you see the foreman of the construction job, Paul Ross, climbing below me. Ross looks worried. He quipped as I snapped the shutter: ‘There’s a lot of traffic on the avenue. You might get run over if you fall.’ The view below shows four of the men who are building the tower – Floyd Lilly, Steve Homan, Bill Madanich and Bob Keltesch. They work so high that they use a microphone and loud speaker setup.”

While the on-air debut was again pushed back, news arrived that WOKY (channel 19) and WMIL (channel 31) would be on air “in the near future.”

Technically, WCAN first went on air on Thursday, Sept. 3, but that was a mistake.

“Poller said some sets near the two hotels had received shows on channel 25 Thursday due to a ‘two watt leak’ from the transmitter next to the TV tower during a ‘dry run’ of programs,” the Journal wrote the following day.

On Sept. 11, 1953, WCAN-TV hit the air as the second TV station and the first UHF station in Milwaukee, and its tower has been a fixture of the Downtown Milwaukee skyline ever since.

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Later, WCAN closed after CBS bought WOKY (channel 19, which in 1955 became WXIX on channel 18 and is now WVTV 18/24) and moved its affiliation there. WCAN sold its transmitter tower and rooftop equipment to the network for $786,000.

In the future, other stations would become CBS affiliates – mostly VHF stations like WITI (6) and WISN (12) – but now, CBS in Milwaukee is on WDJT-TV, channel 58, a UHF station.

Over the years, some radio and TV stations had studios located in the Hilton building, but there are no studios there now.