Editor’s note: This article originally ran Dec. 8, 2011. The tower collapsed in a storm on Dec. 3, 1915.

Dec. 13 marks the 130th anniversary of the San Jose Electric Tower, a structure that attracted worldwide attention at the time but is largely forgotten today.

The Electric Tower straddled the intersection of Santa Clara and Market streets in downtown San Jose, standing 237 feet high, if you counted the 30-foot flagpole atop it, and weighing 15 tons. It was large enough that streetcars and horse-drawn vehicles had no problem passing beneath.

To say its debut on Dec. 13, 1881, was an important event is an understatement. The newspapers of the day were both eloquent and enthusiastic about the new landmark.

“For the first time the citizens of San Jose realized that they lived in a the only city lighted by electric light, supported by a tower, which like the Colossus at Rhodes, stood astride her two principal streets,” reported the San Jose Daily Herald.

The Herald went on: “Today San Jose may be more proud of her tower than Egypt of its Sphinx and obelisks, than Pisa of her Leaning Tower, England of her Monuments of war, New York of her Cleopatra’s Needle. These are monuments of pride and raised by a proud and haughty aristocracy. This is a monument to progress and the diffusion of light in out midst.”

Unfortunately, while Egypt still has its Sphinx, Pisa still has its Leaning Tower and New York still has its Cleopatra’s Needle, San Jose no longer has its Electric Tower.

It was lost on Dec. 3, 1915, when winds of close to 75 miles per hour slammed into the structure.

When the tower was erected 34 years earlier, the process of coating iron with zinc to prevent rust was unknown, so the threaded joints of the tower had rusted through.

It was easy prey to the high winds.

One account of its end, in Santa Clara Valley: Images of the Past by Donald O. DeMers Jr., and Ann M. Whitesell, reads, “A crackling and snapping of rods and pipes; a warning cry from bystanders and the historic tower at Market and Santa Clara Streets crashed to the platform built for its reconstruction. At about 11:55 o’clock a rod snapped, then another. About 50 feet below the top the huge frame buckled. … The snapping of the rods could be heard for some distance and the few people who were on the streets were enabled to get out of the way.”

DeMers and Whitesell wrote that only one person reported an injury, having been hit on the hand by a piece of flying metal.

The tower was the brainchild of James Jerome Owen, who moved from New York to California in 1850 in search of gold.

He didn’t find a lot and moved to San Jose in 1861 and with B.H. Cottle co-founded the Mercury newspaper, a weekly that became a daily in 1872, according to Clyde Arbuckle’s History of San Jose.

Owen used his position as publisher and editor to champion causes he felt would develop his new hometown, particularly the electrification of San Jose. He even designed the towers he wanted the city to erect, envisioning four towers with large arc lamps and reflecting shields to light the night.

The Mercury promoted its owner’s claims that such towers would “make crime shrink away and leave San Jose” and that the project “would defy the elements, cheat gravitation, and all of its enemies.”

In June 1881, $4,000 was raised by public subscription to start on the first tower and construction started in August.

Additional towers never came to fruition and within a very few years, the tower was lit only on weekends and holidays.

Although it’s clear that the light didn’t reach all that far, there were still complaints from farmers in Los Gatos and even Morgan Hill that the lights were keeping their chickens awake at night, according to A Postcard History of San Jose by Leonard McKay and Nestor “Wally” Wahlberg.

“The farm ladies were not happy with the art light reflectors lighting up the sky and the chickens stopping laying,” says Barbara Johnston, director of education at History San Jose. “They used the money from the extra eggs to buy school supplies and other things.”

Whether the lights truly inhibited the area chickens, the tower proved an obstacle to flying ducks and geese.

In a detailed account of the history of the tower and how the original lighting system worked on www.sanjose.com, the author who writes under the name “underbelly,” wrote, “Cops favored ‘the Tower Beat’ because ducks could be recovered and sold to local eateries.”

The nearby Tower Saloon took its name from the tower and was one of several watering holes with customers who imbibed enough courage to attempt climbing the tower on a regular basis.

Not everyone was a fan of the tower, which some called “Owen’s Folly,” but it did attract worldwide attention. Owen himself left San Jose in 1885 after selling his interest in the newspaper, and he died in San Francisco that same year.

Johnston says that many people believed the Electric Tower inspired the Eiffel tower in Paris.

“People said that when Eiffel was building the iron cathedral down in Baja and he sent people up to look at the Electric Tower and that was the inspiration for the Eiffel Tower,” she says.

Gustave Eiffel did do some traveling to South America, and he did design a church of galvanized iron that was shown at the 1889 Paris Exposition, for which the Eiffel Tower was built. However, that church was prefabricated in Belgium with plans to ship it to Africa. Instead it ended up in Santa Rosalia, Mexico, but there is no record of Eiffel being there with it.

While the Electric Tower remains only in old photographs and postcards, a replica one-third the size of it is at the History San Jose Park, Senter Road and Phelan Avenue.

The replica stands 115 feet tall and was paid for and donated to the city by the San Jose Real Estate Board on May 1, 1977, as part of the celebration of San Jose’s 200th birthday.

Now known as the Santa Clara County Association of Realtors, the group recently donated $10,000 to Christmas in the Park.

Johnston says the replica tower is lighted for special occasions, such as the annual Valley of Heart’s Delight fundraiser each June.

When individuals or groups rent out the park, they have the option of having the tower lights on. It’s popular with brides, who often put the dance floor under the tower for their receptions, Johnston says.

When it’s lit, it’s a striking visual landmark for planes flying into Mineta San Jose Airport.

The replica Electric Tower is open to the public whenever the park is.

Visit www.historysanjose.org for additional information. For details on how the Electric Tower worked, visit www.sanjose.com and enter Electric Tower in the search field.