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These Crazy Unrealized Urban Designs Would Have Made NYC A Wonderful Funland And/Or Twisted Hellscape
24 photos
Moshe Safdie's Habitat New York I, a modular housing development squeezed in between the FDR Drive and the East River. 1968. <br>
Metropolis Books / Never Built New York
Frank Lloyd Wright's Key Project for Ellis Island, a futuristic complex of housing for 7,500 people, a 500-room hotel and an array of facilities including hospitals, churches, schools, a library and a sports arena. 1961. <br>
Metropolis Books / Never Built New York
Paul Rudolph's City Corridor, a vast elevated complex of buildings with a highway running through, multi-level parking, green spaces and more that would have would have run the width of lower Manhattan, with a spur down to the Manhattan Bridge. 1967. <br>
Metropolis Books / Never Built New York
Buckminster Fuller's proposed 2-mile-diameter dome over Manhattan. 1961.<br>
Metropolis Books / Never Built New York
McKim, Mead and White's Grand Central Terminal submission, which was modeled after Spanish cathedral. 1903.<br>
Metropolis Books / Never Built New York
I.M. Pei's Hyperboloid, a proposed 108-story building and transit hub that would have replaced Grand Central Terminal. 1954. <br>
Metropolis Books / Never Built New York
Raymond Hood's proposal for a Skyscraper Bridge, with 50- to 60- story apartment towers rising up over the roadway. The 10,000 foot suspension bridge would have housed 50,000 and featured docking stations for planes and ships at the base of each tower. 1925. <br>
Metropolis Books / Never Built New York
Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Museum Lower Manhattan, planned for piers south of the Brooklyn Bridge, was scuttled after the post-9/11 economic downtown. 2000. <br>
Metropolis Books / Never Built New York
Thomas Hastings and Daniel Chester's French National American Indian Memorial, a seven-story edifice with a 129-foot-tall sculpture of an Indian chief that would have stood on Staten Island's western shore, a stone's throw from what is now the base of the Verrazano–Narrows Bridge. 1909.<br>
Metropolis Books / Never Built New York
Daniel Libeskind's World Trade Center Gardens of the World, a 16-acre plaza with a spiral of buildings of increasing height, culminating in a jagged 1776-foot-tall tower. The proposal was <a href="http://gothamist.com/2005/05/05/freedom_tower_design_to_be_scrapped.php">nixed by the NYPD</a> over concerns it would be particularly vulnerable to a terrorist attack. 2005. <br>
Metropolis Books / Never Built New York
Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum New Penn Station proposal, which would have moved the entrance to the transportation hub across Eighth Avenue to the General Post Office and placed a glass-and-steel roof over the building's courtyard. 2005.<br>
Metropolis Books / Never Built New York
Philip Johnson's Chelsea Walk apartment complex. The project was abandoned when the city's economy went south. 1967. <br>
Metropolis Books / Never Built New York
Santiago Calatrava's <a href="http://gothamist.com/2006/02/16/gondola_dreams.php">Governor's Island gondola</a>, which would have connected the island with Brooklyn and Manhattan. 2006. <br>
Metropolis Books / Never Built New York
Wallace K. Harrison, Le Corbusier, Oscar Niemeyer and others' Preliminary Manhattan UN Plans, which included this vast plaza and imposing stepped entryway, featuring stairs and escalators. 1947. <br>
Metropolis Books / Never Built New York
William Zeckendorf and Wallace K. Harrison's UN/Midtown Connector, a proposal to carve out a vast United Nations campus between 45th and 48th streets, from the East River all the way to Lexington Avenue. 1948. <br>
Metropolis Books / Never Built New York
Frank Gehry's Atlantic Yards, the Forest City Ratner promise that <a href="http://gothamist.com/2009/06/11/no_more_frank_gehry_at_atlantic_yar.php">never materialized</a>. 2003.
Metropolis Books / Never Built New York
Robert Moses's Fifth Avenue Extension, which would have bisected Washington Square Park and connected the thoroughfare to his <a href="http://gothamist.com/2015/10/29/lomex_robert_moses.php">planned</a> Lower Manhattan Expressway. 1955.
Metropolis Books / Never Built New York
Rufus Henry Gilbert's Elevated Railway, a pneumatic-powered train set into 24-foot wrought iron Gothic arches standing on Corinthian columns. 1870. <br>
Metropolis Books / Never Built New York
SHoP's Flushing Stadium, a 25,000-seat arena in Flushing Meadows Park that would have housed a Major League Soccer Team. 2013. <br>
Metropolis Books / Never Built New York
Zaha Hadid's 42nd Street Hotel, the architect's submission to a competition to construct a mixed-use hotel at 42nd Street and 8th Avenue. 1994.<br>
Metropolis Books / Never Built New York
Santiago Calatrava's proposal to "finish" the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. 1992. <br>
Metropolis Books / Never Built New York
Morphosis Olympic Village at Hunter's Point in Queens, part of New York City's bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics. 2004 <br>
Metropolis Books / Never Built New York
William Zeckendorf's Rooftop Airport, a proposed 144-square-block airport elevated above the West Side and jutting out into the Hudson River, as depicted in <em>Life</em> magazine. 1961. <br>
Metropolis Books / Never Built New York
Norman Bel Geddes and Buckminster Fuller's Dodger Dome, a 55,000-seat stadium with a giant plastic dome and what would have been the first artificial grass field in Major League Baseball. 1955. <br>
Metropolis Books / Never Built New York
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