Never built New York: the city that might have been – in pictures

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2017/jan/12/new-york-never-built-skyscraper-cathedral-pneumatic-railway-in-pictures?CMP=fb_gu

by msrpotus • 10 years ago

66 10 10 years ago

theguardian.com

cavemanmike• 10 years ago

Beautiful, makes me want to build alternate history fiction around these buildings.

jonbaer• 10 years ago

Would have been great to see a dome built by Buckminster Fuller in Brooklyn

Animats2• 10 years ago

Fuller's 1960 plan for a two mile dome over Manhattan isn't mentioned in the parent article.[1] That was an impressive concept.

[1] http://www.ecoredux.com/archive_project03_01.html

qohen• 10 years ago

Would have been great to see a dome built by Buckminster Fuller in Brooklyn

You might want to check out the recent SNL sketch, "The Bubble" (2 min, 20 sec), if you haven't already seen it:

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKOb-kmOgpI

emmanuel_1234• 10 years ago

Woah, the "hyperboloid" looks very much like Guangzhou Tower.

Google Images: http://goo.gl/Q4zf9t

Animats2• 10 years ago

The Pan Am building (now MetLife?) was built there instead. Much more rentable floor area than I.M. Pei's skinny tower.

shmerl• 10 years ago

Henry Gilbert’s design was a hybrid of Alfred Beach’s air-powered underground and Charles T Harvey’s cable-powered elevated railway. Passengers would be moved through a double row of ‘atmospheric tubes’ suspended from wrought-iron Gothic arches, held on slender Corinthian columns.

An early idea of hyperloop?

ChuckMcM• 10 years ago

I really like the optimism of the early 20th century. So often architect envisioned multiblock structures that would sit above the existing landscape to provide new spaces. A recent idea like that in Cupertino went down in flames at the voting booth but the Apple 'spaceship' campus continues apace.

icegreentea• 10 years ago

Even though some of these are pretty old, they look fascinating. The human imagination is really something. That skyscraper bridge would look so badass in real life!

sreenadh• 10 years ago

I once saw some drawings of plans for Moscow under USSR. They where just marvelous. Its a pity that I forgot to bookmark it and could not find it again.

Never built New York: the city that might have been – in pictures

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