Cathedral Tower

Revolving restaurants were all the rage in the 1960s and '70s. Inspired by the Calgary Tower in Canada, one televangelist had the idea of building one to attract visitors to his church. The Cathedral Tower, on the Cathedral of Tomorrow Pentecostal megachurch campus, was meant to be 750 feet tall (taller than the Calgary Tower and the Seattle Space Needle) and double as a studio and a transmitter for pastor Rex Humbard's planned TV channel.

Unfortunately for him, suburban Northeast Ohio was not the best place to build such a mammoth structure, for multiple reasons. Humbard could not secure water and sewage services, and neighbors soon filed lawsuits to stop the project. To add to that, the Cathedral of Tomorrow entered financial trouble after it was revealed that Humbard sold unregistered securities to his congregation.

Construction of the tower stopped after just several months in 1971, leaving it as a 494-foot stub. Although Humbard promised that construction would resume with modified plans, he instead chose to move to Florida in 1982, and he sold the Cathedral of Tomorrow in 1994.

Today, Cathedral Tower remains unfinished as it has for over 50 years. However, it has managed to partially fulfill its original intended purpose by serving as a communications tower. It is the tallest structure in Summit County, Ohio, outdoing any building in nearby urban Akron.