Never built New York

Greg Goldin

New York towers among world capitals, but they city we know might have never reached even more stellar heights, or burrowed into more destructive depths, had the ideas pictured in the minds of its greatest dreamers progressed beyond the drawing board and taken form in stone, steel, and glass. What is wonderfully elegant and grand might easily have been ingloriously grandiose; what is blandly remarkable might have been delightfully provocative or humanely inspiring. Nearly 200 ambitious projects spanning 200 years encompass bridges, skyscrapers, mass-transit plans, parks, streets and highways, amusements, airports, schemes to fill in rivers and extend Manhattan, and much, much more. Included are unrealized visions for such landmarks as Central Park, Columbus Circle, Lincoln Center, the United Nations, Grand Central Terminal, the World Trade Center site, and many other locales in...