Just down the block from our office in Moscow is the Shukhov Tower (Шуховская башня), an awesome broadcast tower in Moscow designed by Vladimir Shukhov. It's 525 feet tall (Seattle's Space Needle is 605 feet) and seems especially big because there are no tall buildings in the vicinity. It was built from 1920–1922, during the Russian Civil War. The tower sections are "hyperbolic steel gridshell of single-cavity hyperboloids of rotation made of straight beams, the ends of which rest against circular foundations." [tech details via Wikipedia]
It's funny -- my Russian friend just kind of shrugged it off when I first saw it and raved about how cool it was. When I looked it up, I found that it is old and historical, and even endangered. The tower is visible, but not accessible to tourists.
Shukhov Tower is under threat of demolition, and is number one on UNESCO's "Endangered Buildings" list [UNESCO is also the keeper of the great World Heritage sites list]. There is now an international campaign underway to save it.
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