Unbuilt Wish List
 

What are some unbuilt projects in your city you wish came to be?

NYC: Met Life Tower is the granddaddy of all fantastic, unbuilt projects.

http://nyc-architecture.com/wp-conte.../GRP19-502.jpg

link

^^^^

I back you up. It sucks looking at that current capped base structure and thinking of what it could've been. :(

And it was an art-deco too!

There was also city hall:

http://citynoise.org/upload/42948.jpg
http://citynoise.org/article/10675

Philadelphia:

The 1914 Taylor subway plan:


hyperrealcartography.tumblr.com

1917 Greber plan for axial roads in Center City


briangoestotown.blogspot.com

Mandeville Place


steveweinek.com

Pretty much nothing else that bothers me for not being built but there are plenty of things that weren't built correctly IMO.

Wow, how tall would that have been?

The Asheville subway system detailed here along with all manner of other grand plans for the city back during its Jazz Age boom years.

Then there was the Art Deco courthouse that was proposed along with the city hall. The county scrapped plans for it after seeing the City Building, as it was far too daring. We ended up with a big neoclassical box instead:

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...Art/Art152.jpg

Then there was this tower planned to go atop the Grove Arcade, a 1920's shopping mall that takes up an entire block downtown.

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b...0Art/Art55.jpg

And in addition to those there were probably a dozen or so 10-15 story commercial buildings, most of them Art Deco, in the pipeline when the stock market crashed in 1929. Asheville would have been a radically different city had those all been built.

Austin, Texas

21C Hotel & Condos - 580 feet with 44 floors. They later changed the design and split it between two buildings with a ~550 foot and ~325 foot building. The project is dead. The museum group is now planning a smaller development east of downtown.

The first lot the project was slated for has since seen a 17-story apartment building built, and the 2nd site is being planned for a three tower project that I'll talk about next.

First design - and the one I preferred:
http://i.imgur.com/JcdtJeO.jpg

Second design:
http://i.imgur.com/rkNXFin.jpg

Waller Park Place - 65 floors, "35 to 45 floors" and "17 to 20" floors. This project is still planned and is working through the developmental process, but it has changed design. The plan was and still is for residential, hotel, office and retail.

http://i.imgur.com/fqnBs0M.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/CIh5l0s.jpg

At the moment this is what we know will happen. The heights now are 576 feet with 52 floors, 501 feet with 45 floors and 258 feet with 21 floors. The project is still planned to have residential, office, hotel and retail.

http://i.imgur.com/nfuifnA.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/DHPLioi.jpghttp://i.imgur.com/ce4JyIi.jpg

Fairmont Austin Hotel - 691 feet to the spire and 572 feet to the roof/mechanical screen. The floor count was published as 50 floors, but the actual building elevations showed 45 occupied floors.

http://i.imgur.com/FaAQMb5.jpg

This project went through a design change. The below design is now being built. Site prep is underway. This design is 595 feet to the spire and 456 feet to the mechanical screen with 36 floors. it is going to have 1,066 rooms which will make it the largest hotel in Austin. A couple of articles have also said it'll be the largest Fairmont Hotel in the world. The building will have a walkway connecting it to the convention center across the street.

http://i.imgur.com/HTy8RzQ.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/YqDRLpD.jpg

I have a few local ones here in Evansville, IN but nothing major as this city just isn't big enough or smart enough to do anything worthwhile, whether built or unbuilt.

Here's my general list...

1. American Commerce Center-Philly
2. Chicago Spire
3. 3 Eau Claire-Calgary
4. Jets Stadium-Manhattan
5. Twin Towers II-Manhattan ( I don't have a problem with Freedom Tower or WTC 2, but the rest of the area should have been a rebuild).

Interesting.

------------------------------------ 80 st Book Tower ----------- Yamasaki ---- US Steel clone ---- Twin of One Detroit ------------------------------------------------------------------- Riverfront Towers east of Ren Cen

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h2...1.jpg~original

scottrreed's Bucket
http://s66.photobucket.com/user/scot...oit-1.jpg.html

A 100 stories tall was the original proposal. The current structure is around 450 feet at 30 floors. The original tower would of been in the range of 1400-1500 feet if we use a proportion.

Although may I add another unbuilt structure, and that is the Chicago Spire:

RIP: :(

http://www.ownacondo.com/images/Spire.jpg
http://www.ownacondo.com/images/Spire.jpg

Toronto has 2 books on the subject.

Among the ones I most wish were built are Vimy Circle:

http://torontoist.com/attachments/to...myCircle23.jpg
.

https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4001/4...26ab7c35e3.jpg
.

Cambrai Avenue:

http://www.blogto.com/upload/2010/11...18-cambrai.jpg
.

Queen St. subway:

http://www.blogto.com/upload/2010/11...subwaysmap.jpg
.

Eatons College Street (only the north-east corner of the podium was ever built):

http://urbantoronto.ca/sites/default...4216-12653.jpg
.

Aww man! That certainly would've made a dramatic impact on the skyline.

Waldorf = Astoria
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3203/...9816cc96_o.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3203/...9816cc96_o.jpg

Grant Park 3 and 4
http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f2...kSouthWall.jpg
http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f2...kSouthWall.jpg

The Chicago (just a vision)
http://cdn.cstatic.net/images/gridfs...hechicago1.jpg
http://cdn.cstatic.net/images/gridfs...hechicago1.jpg

Park Fifth (Los Angeles)
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YTJGeAcs0u...g_Square_3.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YTJGeAcs0u...g_Square_3.jpg

Good point. Waldorf was a terrible loss. One of my favorite designs for Chicago that didn't make the cut. I wish somebody would revive or revisit it as a development opportunity.

too late, the building below has since been built on the site where the waldorf-astoria was once proposed.

here is my favorite unbuilt project for chicago.

Betrand Goldberg's original plan for river city.

http://www.architechgallery.com/arch...ity_towers.jpg
source: http://www.architechgallery.com/arch..._goldberg.html

Corcoran Gallery expansion by Frank Ghery:

http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h3...psc6ce2df2.jpg

source

I saw the drawings go in at the building permit office and recall being excited that it was moving forward - but then later the project got cancelled. The lot was apparently sold to a developer and is now a rather average office building.

Toronto's original 1910 subway plan. Some of the routes were kind of stupid, but nonetheless it would have been nice to have had a 40 year head start on subway construction.

http://i.imgur.com/ahw8ppA.jpg



A 1982 GO Transit plan to have high-speed, high-frequency, driver-less light metro service from Hamilton to Oshawa. Electrified trains and metro-like service are now only finally on the way.

http://i.imgur.com/vanBjE3.gif



The Guild Hall, proposed in 1834 on King Street.

http://i.imgur.com/umu5uLA.jpg



A 1923 proposal for a monumental square across from Union Station. What we got instead was arguably better, but it also could have been built elsewhere.

http://i.imgur.com/tXrUn11.jpg



Like most cities, Toronto saw a whole bunch of planned towers cancelled after 1929. Maybe about half of these were ever completed.

http://i.imgur.com/C7QLYnz.jpg



More recently there was the massive Oxford Place casino + office + hotel + convention centre development, which was cancelled when the city rejected the casino. The office + convention centre portion is still in the works, but now on a delayed timeline and likely at a smaller scale.

http://i.imgur.com/1cAb9Ts.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/BfYWcJP.png

http://i.imgur.com/cxX4kxn.png

This was built in Shanghai:

http://img.timeoutshanghai.com/20110...530_Medium.jpg