Parallel universe: tracing New York’s unbuilt history

A new edition from Metropolis Books, Never Built New York explores what the Big Apple might look like in an alternative universe of unbuilt projects. Through sketches, renderings, prints and models, co-authors Greg Goldin and Sam Lubell tell the stories of nearly 200 projects proposed by architects over the last two centuries. More than just failed plans, the unrealised buildings make us question how the urban environment effects how we live today.
In the foreword to the book, Daniel Libeskind compares architects to composers, seeing their drawings as scores hidden in the back of drawers; never played yet laden with genius. The book shows architects as idealistic, yet often unrealistic dreamers; the Skyscraper Bridges of Raymond Hood emerge eerily from their pencil sketches and R Buckminster Fuller’s glass dome over Manhattan, half a mile in diameter, looks positively futuristic.
Moshe Safdie’s Habitat was a modular housing community proposed in 1968 to prevent middle class residents moving to the suburbs
Many of these radical plans looked to solve problems that still haven’t been tackled. William Zeckendorf’s floating airport, designed in 1945 in an attempt to reduce air-travel time, rose 200 ft above street level on steel columns with elevators rising from runways; while Robert Moses’ 1949 expressway, planned to combat congestion through a six lane path, sat ten floors above the street.
Many of the plans would replace the structures which define New York today. What if the High Line didn’t exist and Steven Holl’s 1980 Bridge of Houses existed instead? There'd be a housing system combining studios for the city’s homeless with luxury apartments, devised to reuse space and solve social problems.
Other designs feel like a great loss to New York. Moshe Safdie’s triangular patterned M-shaped Columbus Centre, George Howe and William Lescaze’s blocky, modernist Museum of Modern Art or Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim, which could have landed bang in the middle of Manhattan, could have completely changed our relationship with the city.
Somehow, Goldin and Lubell still manage to tell an architectural history of New York, through economic crises, changing mayors and governments, technological developments and trends – an inverse history of a city that never was.
R Buckminster Fuller's 'Dome over Manhattan', which he nicknamed 'Noah's Ark #2', was devised in 1961 as part of a plan to control temperature in the city and save money on heating and cooling
George Howe and William Lescaze were invited to propose a new design for New York’s MoMA in 1930, but they didn’t get the job
Alfred Ely Beach’s Beach Pneumatic Railway of 1870, which pushed railcars with atmospheric pressure, came close to completion
While Daniel Libeskind’s proposal for the new World Trade Centre was chosen in 2002, this original plan was never realised and a new version redesigned in collaboration with Skidmore, Owings and Merrill’s David Childs came to fruition in 2014
Paul Rudolph’s 1967 City Corridor proposed a megastructure of connecting buildings that would contain a highway running from the Hudson to the East river
William Zeckendorf and Wallace K Harrison’s proposal for the United Nations in 1948
INFORMATION
Never Built New York, $55, published by Metropolis Books. For more information, visit the Artbook website
Wallpaper* Newsletter
Receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories from around the world direct to your inbox.
Harriet Thorpe is a writer, journalist and editor covering architecture, design and culture, with particular interest in sustainability, 20th-century architecture and community. After studying History of Art at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and Journalism at City University in London, she developed her interest in architecture working at Wallpaper* magazine and today contributes to Wallpaper*, The World of Interiors and Icon magazine, amongst other titles. She is author of The Sustainable City (2022, Hoxton Mini Press), a book about sustainable architecture in London, and the Modern Cambridge Map (2023, Blue Crow Media), a map of 20th-century architecture in Cambridge, the city where she grew up.
-
Vincent Van Duysen launches ‘most modern’ Zara Home collection
The fourth instalment of architect Vincent Van Duysen’s collaboration with Zara Home introduces a modernist sensibility, with new materials and refined, architectural forms
-
For its US debut, Formafantasma goes back to basics
On view at Friedman Benda this summer, the show is the result of the Milan-based studio's ongoing fascination with history, technology and domesticity
-
Wallpaper* checks in at The Ned Nomad in New York
This hotel and social club is a vibrant hub of hospitality that evokes 1920s glamour for members and visitors alike
-
The world of Bart Prince, where architecture is born from the inside out
For the Albuquerque architect Bart Prince, function trumps form, and all building starts from the inside out; we revisit a profile from the Wallpaper* archive, first published in April 2009
-
Is embracing nature the key to a more fire-resilient Los Angeles? These landscape architects think so
For some, an executive order issued by California governor Gavin Newsom does little to address the complexities of living within an urban-wildland interface
-
Hop on this Fire Island Pines tour, marking Pride Month and the start of the summer
A Fire Island Pines tour through the work of architecture studio BOND is hosted by The American Institute of Architects New York in celebration of Pride Month; join the fun
-
A Laurel Canyon house shows off its midcentury architecture bones
We step inside a refreshed modernist Laurel Canyon house, the family home of Annie Ritz and Daniel Rabin of And And And Studio
-
A refreshed Rockefeller Wing reopens with a bang at The Met in New York
The Met's Michael C Rockefeller Wing gets a refresh by Kulapat Yantrasast's WHY Architecture, bringing light, air and impact to the galleries devoted to arts from Africa, Oceania and the Ancient Americas
-
A Fire Island house for two sisters reimagines the beach home typology
Coughlin Scheel Architects’ Fire Island house is an exploration of an extended family retreat for the 21st century
-
PlayLab opens its Los Angeles base, blending workspace, library and shop in a new interior
Creative studio PlayLab opens its Los Angeles workspace and reveals plans to also open its archive to the public for the first time, revealing a dedicated space full of pop treasures
-
Modernist Travel Guide: a handy companion to explore modernism across the globe
‘Modernist Travel Guide’, a handy new pocket-sized book for travel lovers and modernist architecture fans, comes courtesy of Wallpaper* contributor Adam Štěch and his passion for modernism