Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda: Grand Schemes

[lofter1]

Manhattan looks really good with all those finger piers reaching out into the Harbor.

Engineers: What kind of structural work would be required to build bridges of that size and which could hold office towers stretching out from the main supports?

[Harvick2933]

Had both been built they'd be neighbors (Convocation on the site of NYLife Pyramid).

Yeah I know that. It's just that I've never been a fan of the full-height version of MetLife North's design. The building's proportions as-is are perfect IMO, but build it any taller and it would look too bottom-heavy like a couch potato with a sagging beer-belly.

I must say though that the Convocation Tower would look better context-wise if it was proposed and built on the 1 Penn Plaza site. It would form a nice visual pairing with the Empire State Building and form a dramatic backdrop to the Old Penn Station.

Anyways, the skyscraper bridges are definitely more monumental than the Lindenthal Bridge, but I seriously doubt that they could've been practical from an engineering standpoint. I just don't see how a 20+ story steel structure with heavy masonry cladding could be cantilevered over such a long distance. Also, imagine the congestion on that bridge when residents and office workers in the bridge buildings have to jostle for space on the road with longer-distance commuters! It's a gridlock nightmare waiting to happen...

[antinimby]

Those unbuilt proposals all have a Seven Wonders of the World feel to them.

If even half of them were built, it would have made New York an almost mythical city that few modern cities, if any, could ever dream of matching.

What a shame none of them were built. I guess we should be grateful we at least have the ESB, Chrysler, Woolworth, Grand Central and Brooklyn Bridge.

[antinimby]

Also, imagine the congestion on that bridge when residents and office workers in the bridge buildings have to jostle for space on the road with longer-distance commuters! It's a gridlock nightmare waiting to happen.

This is from the first post in this thread...

The pier is not especially picturesque, but it's an ideal perspective from which to contemplate the fate of once-grand schemes discarded into the dustbin of history. It was here, in the 1920's, that the structural engineer Gustav Lindenthal came close to building the greatest bridge in the world.

Mr. Lindenthal's bridge would have crossed the Hudson River from West 57th Street to Weehawken, N.J., a 7,460-foot double-decked structure with a center span of 3,240 feet, far longer than any span raised at the time. It would have provided 16 lanes for automobiles on the top deck and 12 rail tracks on the lower deck and would have been supported by two immense towers, each taller than the Woolworth Building, then the world's tallest skyscraper. The bridge would have been a structure of such record-breaking enormity, it would have instantly ranked as a defining icon of New York.

But the bridge was never built. And now, instead of a view of an icon, the western end of 57th Street offers a parking lot for garbage trucks.

Looks like it had enough transportation lines to support an entire borough much less a tower. I don't think a relatively small population of workers and residents in a building the size of perhaps the Hotel Pennsylvannia is going to overwhelm the capacity of this truly collosal bridge.

[Harvick2933]

Antinimby, I wasn't referring to the Lindenthal Bridge, I was referring to these guys:

Skyscraper Bridges and Tower Clusters:

[Shadly]

Skyscraper Bridges and Tower Clusters:

Mmmm.....crippling gridlock.

[RandySavage]

Those unbuilt proposals all have a Seven Wonders of the World feel to them.

If even half of them were built, it would have made New York an almost mythical city that few modern cities, if any, could ever dream of matching.

What a shame none of them were built. I guess we should be grateful we at least have the ESB, Chrysler, Woolworth, Grand Central and Brooklyn Bridge.

Agreed. I still think New York achieved that mythical status in reality (at least looking back from today), but it's fun to imagine how incredible the Mythic City would be had there been, as proposed in the 1920s, a couple more ESB-scale buildings, five additional Chrysler-scale ones, and at least one building that was planned to dwarf the ESB (Broadway-Church Building). Harlem alone had two major towers that came very close to fruition.

Imagine this:


with a few of these added in:

[antinimby]

Would they have built the Lincoln Tunnel if the Lindenthal Bridge had been built?

I would gladly trade the Lincoln Tunnel we have today for the Lindenthal Bridge.

12 rail tracks. . . WOW!

[antinimby]

By the way, if they had built the Lindenthal, those 12 rail tracks would have had to go somewhere on the Manhattan side.

Which subway/commuter rail lines would they have connected to?

[NYatKNIGHT]

One could go under 42nd street and become the 7 train - right to Grand Central. Another could merge with the A train.

[antinimby]

But Lindenthal is around 57 St.

[NYatKNIGHT]

Trying to think of a way to directly connect to the two train stations.
The obvious subway connection is Columbus Circle.

[lofter1]

Perhaps the rail lines weren't meant to carry passenger trains at all, but rather freight trains which would funnel into what used to be the vast train yards where Trump Riverside is now. The bridge could have replaced the rail barges which brought the trains across the Hudson.

[econ_tim]

[Fabrizio]

Michael M. Franck, Arthur C. Lohsen, James C. McCrery II

Lincoln Center was built at a time when architects believed that the present was so vastly different from the past that the past no longer had meaning. The atom had been split, polio cured: no problem seemed too great for the application of cold, scientific reasoning. Modern architecture was an expression of that attitude, and Lincoln Center was a collaborative effort of the most notable modernist architects of a generation.

While it was noble that the designers loosely followed the urban form of Michelangelo's Campidoglio in Rome, Michelangelo's subtleties make Lincoln Center pale in comparison. Our proposal builds upon the legacy of Lincoln Center—or at least upon the Campidoglio model that inspired it.

Our buildings come out to Columbus Avenue. Their facades hold to the street edges; their great porticos embrace the street and sidewalk approaches. The difference in elevation from the street level to the courtyard level enabled us to create a grand staircase that spills onto Columbus Avenue, connecting the entire complex to the city. The New York State Theater and Avery Fisher Hall, twins, define and contain the plaza. The plaza facade of the twins follows more closely the Campidoglio example through the simple gesture of angling the facades—a device that further defines and contains the plaza. The main halls of each of these buildings open onto the plaza, and two-story arcades along the north and south sides of the plaza shelter small cafés, which enhance the celebratory character of a quintessentially urban space.

The Metropolitan Opera House, both central and removed, sits upon its pedestal above the plaza but is also a full participant in the formation of that space. The composition of the facade brings scale to the building and to the plaza. Large panels on the front facade, similar to those on the Columbus Avenue facades of the twins, will frame banners promoting current and forthcoming events, and a temple-like front portico serves as the ceremonial entry. The friezes and panels on all the buildings invite inscriptions commemorating great composers or conductors.

The plaza—its character and shape defined by the architecture of the three buildings that contain it—is unlike any other urban space in New York. Arcades and stairs ensure a pedestrian flow in and around it, making people central to its drama, and the obelisks, statues, fountains, pedestals, and flagpoles that enliven the space provide places for people to gather.

The complex along Amsterdam Avenue again holds to the avenue's edge, participating in the endeavor of all great urban architecture: making good streets. The buildings house retail spaces along their Amsterdam Avenue side, with offices above. To the north of the Opera House, the new home to the Vivian Beaumont Theater and Library is arranged in a manner that encloses an exterior garden intended for outdoor musical performances. The south facade of the Opera House incorporates the proscenium and stage for a new outdoor amphitheater.

The new Lincoln Center would be much easier to visit. A three-lane drop-off at grade would be sheltered by the porticos at the New York State Theater and Avery Fisher Hall. Four entrances lead down into a parking structure beneath the entire site. Loading docks are likewise below ground, removing such eyesores from the pedestrian's realm. A smaller, graceful bridge replaces the virtually unused brutal concrete structure that now connects the plaza to the Juilliard School, opening 65th Street to light and air.

The architecture of the new Lincoln Center is classical—an architectural language shared by all of Western society, developing over thousands of years and capable of dynamic development in the present and future. It is founded on the human form and has human scale, even in the largest of buildings. It is an architecture of curves, of shifting shadows, of subtlety. It seeks, unashamedly, to be harmonious and beautiful.

Classical architecture is physically and stylistically durable. Most buildings today are built to last 25 years before major renovation or replacement. Classical architecture employs solid materials and construction methods that have been developed and improved over millennia to shed water and hold buildings together. That means that our children will not have to rebuild what we leave them. Fifty years from now, our grandchildren will be evaluating our decisions, as we are now evaluating the original Lincoln Center. Should we not leave behind us an embodiment of the timeless values of humanity?