Unbuilt New York

[yankeesfan1000]

A proposal from 1962 for Water St from Mies Van de Rohe:


Source

[yankeesfan1000]

I'm having trouble finding old photos or drawings of some of the plans for some of these. The Cities Service building was a nice old skyscraper planned for Battery Park, it sort of looked like the Standard Oil building in NY.

In 1929-30 there was also a plan for a 105 story building at 80 Wall St to be designed by Ely Kahn, which I can't find any pictures of. Lefcourt planned on a 1050 foot building in Times Square. A 100 story building at 95 Broad St, unfortunately the stock market crash killed all of them.

Tower planned for LM, in the photo on the right the non classical building is what occupies the site now:
image hosted on flickr

Source.

[desertpunk]

Thanks yankeesfan! I wonder if there's another render out there for that 150 story tower???

[yankeesfan1000]

How about a bridge?

"Gustav Lindenthal, the engineer who designed the Manhattan, Williamsburg, and Hell Gate Bridges, died without seeing his opus magnum realized. Lindenthal proposed building a bridge that would have spanned the Hudson River from 57th Street in New York City to Hoboken in New Jersey. The bridge was to be 6,000 feet long (nearly twice the length of the George Washington Bridge), 200 feet wide, and 200 feet above the river. It was designed to carry 12 railroads, 24 lanes of traffic, and 2 pedestrian promenades. The corner stone, part of an 8-foot tall block of concrete, was laid in 1895 in Hoboken and was the only part of the bridge to be built."






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[spectre000]

Donald Trump's 1,607 foot tall Television City Tower proposed in 1985.


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[yankeesfan1000]

Originally Posted by desertpunk

Thanks yankeesfan! I wonder if there's another render out there for that 150 story tower???

Edit, beat me to it Spectre!

I tried to do a quick search but couldn't find anything unfortunately. My dad has a ton of NY architecture books so I'll look through some of those later in the week. I remember reading that in the years leading up to the stock market crash, so 1928-29 there were I want to say 52 buildings that were proposed for Manhattan that were all at least 30 stories and only 19 were built. Really depressing.

And I'm assuming that more modern stuff can be posted here as well? Not just classical stuff?

Trump's Television City on the Upper West Side, main tower was set to be 152 stories.

[desertpunk]

Prewar, postwar, modern, classic, post 'em all!

[yankeesfan1000]

I can't imagine the proposals to fill in the Hudson and East Rivers were ever serious proposals, but the two expressways were very serious and very nearly happened.


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Some of the proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway, that would have cut right through Little Italy, Soho, East Village and parts of the West Village.








Source for all.

Midtown Manhattan Expressway:

image hosted on flickr

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[yankeesfan1000]

Travelstead Tower, a little over 1000 feet. Such a tough loss, always liked this building.

image hosted on flickr

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From SSP

[yankeesfan1000]

Rockefeller Plaza West 800 feet:


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image hosted on flickr


NYSE Building by SOM 900 feet:

image hosted on flickr


image hosted on flickr


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[yankeesfan1000]

Couple proposals for South Ferry Plaza:

image hosted on flickr



Wiki


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[yankeesfan1000]

New York Colosseum Tower at Columbus Circle where the Time Warner Center is now:


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This was an office building for ABC no idea where in the city it was supposed to be though:


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Frank Gehry's proposal for the NYTimes Building:


SSP

These were part of a major redevelopment plan for Midtown that fell through for a number of reasons, but these were to be built where MSG and Penn Station are today.

image hosted on flickr


image hosted on flickr


WPC, loved this building sad to see it cancelled:


Source

[desertpunk]

The Travelstead Tower is so wacky I wish it was built!


And I've yet to see a failed expressway proposal for NYC that wasn't totally bonkers although it would have been cool if the Paul Rudolph stuff had been built...in Orlando!


curbed


http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2010647114/


http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2010647116/


http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2010647113/

[desertpunk]

"Victory Bridge" Hudson River crossing 1919


http://www.andrewcusack.com/2009/12/...ossoms-bridge/

After the victory of America and her “co-belligerents” in the First World War, a temporary victory arch was erected out of wood and plaster to welcome the troops home from Europe. After the arch was dismantled, however, discussions soon arose on how to permanently commemorate the war dead of New York, with a surprising variety of suggestions made. A beautiful water gate for Battery Park was suggested, with a classical arch flanked by Bernini-like curved colonnades, so that a suitable place existed to welcome important dignitaries and visitors to New York. (Little did they know how soon the airlines would replace the ocean lines). Another proposal was for a giant memorial hall located at the site of a shuttered hotel across from Grand Central Terminal, while others suggested a bell tower.

An entirely different proposal, however, was made by the New York architect Alfred C. Bossom (later ennobled as Baron Bossom of Maidstone)....Bossom envisioned a massive work of engineering and transportation: a ‘Memorial Bridge’ spanning the Hudson at Manhattan. As memorials go, however, it was suggested that the ‘Memorial Bridge’ was too large, too impersonal, and too utterly convenient as a public work to serve as a memorial to the dead, and so Bossom promptly rebranded his idea as the ‘Victory Bridge’. The floor of the bridge was described as very high, in accordance with the requirements of the War Department for ocean-going vessels to pass beneath it, but also allowing the New Jersey side to rest upon the heights of Weehawken. The lower level was to hold ten railway tracks side-by-side.

[desertpunk]

Grand Central Tower 1956


http://theerrantaesthete.com/2008/06/10/tall-tales/

Before there was a Pan Am Tower, this early proposal for a 1,500 ft over the Grand Central tracks came into being. Designed by a young I.M. Pei, this futuristic hyperboloid scheme was scrapped in the early 1960s. Efforts to save the old Grand Central Station finally succeeded in 1969, six years after the Pan Am Building opened.


http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2013/0...nd_central.php

From Curbed:

New Yorkers lament the loss of the original Penn Station to the monstrosity that is Madison Square Garden, but what if the city had lost its other magnificent train station, too? Before Penn Station was knocked down, the city considered demolishing Grand Central to build a soaring office tower that would reach higher than the Empire State Building. In 1956, I.M. Pei proposed the Hyperboloid, a 102-story, circular tower with an hourglass profile that would have been the tallest structure in the world. Architectural Record said it "resembled a bundle of sticks," as the steel supports criss-crossed up the facade; Pei designed it so it would resist nuclear bombs. Many critics consider the Hyperboloid to be Pei's greatest work, and to this day, Pei regrets that it was never built.

According to the book Grand Central Terminal: 100 Years of a New York Landmark, the Hyperboloid died largely because of "internal business reasons." There was a lot of outcry against the destruction of the terminal, but what really doomed Pei's plan was a cheaper, more modest proposal—one of Grand Central's co-owners, the New Haven Railroad, suggested a less grand and less expensive 50-story tower be built. That proposal went no where and the terminal was landmarked before it could be knocked down. The railroads ultimately built a completely different tower beside the terminal to the north: the hulking Pan Am (now MetLife) building, which opened in 1963.

http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2013/0...nd_central.php

[Severiano]

Usually I am depressed when seeing these kinds of threads, but I think its good that a lot of these projects didn't come to fruition. It seems the Athens Charter was being used to re develop NY, this would have destroyed the city, even if the architecture of the individual buildings is nice.

[Hudson11]

Trump's proposed NYSE Tower in 1996, what would have been the new home of the NYSE

http://money.cnn.com/1996/08/13/bizbuzz/trump/


1792 ft tall (roof height), the year of the stock exchange's founding.

[desertpunk]

Buckminster Fuller: Geodesic Dome Over Midtown Manhattan 1960


http://artblart.wordpress.com/2010/0...werbe-hamburg/


The Dome over Manhattan, which would take shape as a canonical image, was based on the notion of tensegrity which had guided construction in 1959 of a large sphere at the University of Oregon, and another one that was shown that same year at New York’s MoMA. The greater effectiveness of tension over compression inspired an oneiric proposal that he took further with the Floating Cloud Structures, ie, tensegrity spheres measuring more than a kilometre wide and held aloft as balloons by the interior air, heated by the sun.
http://arttattler.com/architecturebu...terfuller.html

[HK999]

What happened to America's spirit? So many crazy and inspiring projects in this very thread. I know it's all about money and NY only builds out of demand. But FFS, just build a huge megatall (make it a national necessity or something lol) so it can serve as a new icon (1WTC doesn't really fit the bill imho)! I sincerely believe if NY builds a 150 storey tower, people will come. Make it mixed use, put an observation deck on it and it will be profitable.

Sorry for the rant, but sometimes I just think that this city has so much unused potential!

Great thread btw and thanks for posting those, desertpunk and yankeesfan!

[desertpunk]

Climate-controlling canopy for Manhattan, 1949


http://kaufmann-mercantile.com/futures-of-yore/