There are a few contenders for the World’s Largest Cowboy Boots. The best claim perhaps belongs to this pair, which stands 12m tall, outside the North Star Mall in San Antonio, Texas. Tall as they are, they’re barely visible from above, but thankfully the Street View car drove right by.

And they make quite the sight when decorated for Christmas!

A solitary boot of almost the same height can be found in Edmonton, Alberta. Also hard to pick out on the satellite image, Live Maps’ birds eye view is somewhat better.

It’s about 30cm shorter than the pair in San Antonio, but is equally impressive when lit up!

Meanwhile, a 6.5m pair of boots – along with a 13m wide steel cowboy hat – can be found in Oxbow Park in Seattle, Washington … and on Street View and Live Maps.

These structures were relocated from their original gas station location, where the boots contained the bathrooms!

Another location with a larger-than-life cowboy hat is the mini-replica of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Texas, barely visible from the nearest Street View image:

The hat was added in 1998 in an effort to one-up the residents of Paris, Tennessee after several back-and-forth attempts to create the largest replica.

And in Yukon, Oklahoma, a beautifully landscaped boot can be found in Chisholm Trail Park – named for the route of a 19th century cattle drive between Texas and Kansas. The decorative landscaping, including fountains in the two small ponds, is even more visible on Live Maps’ birds eye view.

Thanks to ‘Koty’, Ray, . and Felippo.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma you can see the Bank of Oklahoma tower, which is a near-exact half-scale replica of the World Trade Center towers in New York City which were destroyed in the 9/11 attacks.

Completed three years after the WTC in 1976, the Bank of Oklahoma was designed by Minoru Yamasaki, who was in fact the architect who designed the original.

Like in New York, Yamasaki had proposed a pair¹ of towers, but for some reason only one was ever built.

At 52 stories and 203 metres tall, the Bank of Oklahoma tower it is almost exactly half of the World Trade Center’s 110 stories and 415 metres, but is still the tallest tower in Oklahoma.

Does anyone else have any replicas of famous buildings to share?

Wikipedia has more on the Bank of Oklahoma tower, and believermag.com has the full story of the building. Thanks to Kottke.

Vladimir Shukhov was a Russian engineer, scientist and architect whose pioneering structural engineering work led to the design of the world’s first hyperboloid structures.

In mathematics, a hyperboloid is a quadric (”a D-dimensional hypersurface defined as the locus of zeros of a quadratic polynomial”) defined by, er… this complex-looking equation. Basically it’s a type of three dimensional surface that is most commonly seen as the shape of power station cooling towers.

The first ever hyperboloid structure was a water tower that was built for the All-Russia exhibition of 1896. The design consists of straight beams in a lattice arrangement, meaning tall towers could be built with minimal wind resistance.

Today seven of Shukhov’s towers remain standing in Russia, including the 160-metre-high Shukhov radio tower in Moscow which was built between 1919 and 1922 during the Russian Civil War. Currently under threat of demolition, the tower is at the top of UNESCO’s ‘Endangered Buildings’ list, and fans have begun a campaign to save it.

The 128 metre Shukhov Tower on the Oka River is the only original surviving hyperboloid electricity pylon, which was a part of a 110kV powerline built between 1927 and 1929. Because of the lattice-style design it’s barely visible in our thumbnail image, but if you click through to the map you’ll be able to see the shadow of the latticework.

The use of hyperboloid structures wasn’t limited to Russia however – in Spain the 158 metre Pylons of Cádiz, completed in 1960, remain as a fantastic example of this method of construction. Here the method was chosen because at the time the Spanish had no way of transporting large steel beams, and Francisco Franco’s regime prohibited the import of anything that was up to the job.

Here’s a KML file of all of the 7 remaining Shukhov towers (or on a map) and there are many other hyperboloid structures in various guises around the world. Wikipedia also has more on Hyperboloid structures, as well as Vladimir Shukhov himself.

As predicted, Spanish Street View Images have just launched across the major Spanish cities of Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, and Valencia!

The images seem to be generally excellent quality, affording us some spectacular view’s of architect Antoni Gaudí’s perpetually-unfinished masterpiece in Barcelona, La Sagrada Família.

So, what else have you found?

Update: Apologies pylon fans, as Jonathan points out in the comments, we’ve mistakenly identified the wrong huge white and orange power pylons. The pylons in this post are in fact the Elbe Crossings 1 and 2, and the actual World’s Tallest Electricity Pylons for Single Phase AC Powerline are here instead.

This is, wait for it… the World’s Tallest Electricity Pylon for Single Phase AC Powerline – which forms part of the Bremen-Industriehafen Weser Powerline Crossing, Bremen, Germany.

There are actually four of these 111 m tall pylons, carrying two parallel sets of single phase AC powerline across the Elbe, and all four look to be painted a lovely stripe of white and International Orange (a colour often used to help people avoid flying planes into tall things).

Especially for dr.R. and cookie monster.