Never Built New York - by Greg Goldin & Sam Lubell (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

New York City as it might have been: 200 years of visionary architectural plans for unbuilt subways, bridges, parks, airports, stadiums, streets, train stations and, of course, skyscrapers

Never Built New York shows us the visionary architectural ideas of the city's greatest dreamers across two centuries of New York City history. Nearly 200 proposals spanning 200 years encompass bridges, skyscrapers, master plans, parks, transit schemes, amusements, airports, plans to fill in rivers and extend Manhattan, and much, much more. Included are alternate visions for Central Park, Columbus Circle, Lincoln Center, MoMA, the UN, Grand Central Terminal, the World Trade Center site and other highlights such as: Alfred Ely Beach's system of airtight subway cars propelled via atmospheric pressure; Frank Lloyd Wright's last project, his Key Plan for Ellis Island, on which he would have developed his dream city; Buckminster Fuller's design for Brooklyn's Dodger Stadium, complete with giant geodesic dome to shield players and fans from the rain; developer William Zeckendorf's Rooftop Airport, perched on steel columns 200 feet above street level, spanning from 24th to 71st Street, Ninth Avenue to the Hudson River; John Johansen's Leapfrog City proposal to create an entirely new neighborhood atop the tenements of East Harlem; and Stephen Holl's Bridge of Houses, offering options from SROs to modest studios to luxury apartments on a segment of what is now the High Line.

Fact-filled and entertaining texts, plus sketches, renderings, prints and models drawn from archives across the country tell stories of ideas that would have drastically transformed the way we inhabit and move through the city.

Review Quotes

...an impact on designers and architects for years to come.--Erika Owen "Travel + Leisure"

...an intoxicating look at the designs for New York that, either through bureaucracy, budget or bad luck, never came to pass...--Anika Burgess "Atlas Obscura"

...leafing through Never Built New York will keep right on provoking gasps at the sheer, lunatic audacity emblazoned on every page.--Justin Davidson "New York Magazine"

...projects from the last two centuries, sited all throughout the five boroughs, that range from the monumental to the mortifying...aborted reflections of their time, place and politics.--Amelia Taylor-Hochberg "Archinect"

...the city's most intriguing and unrealized architectural and design projects.--Darryn King "Wall Street Journal"

Never Built New York encompasses a record of renderings, images, models, and plans... offering an opportunity to reevaluate the present in terms of the possible.--Alexandre De Looz "Bomb Magazine"

a gorgeous tome published by Metropolis Books...Perfect for the urbanist, the New York City-dweller, or really anyone--this book is as historically fascinating as it is visually compelling.--Meg Miller "fastcodesign.com"

a unique look at New York through various historical eras, such as the Gilded Age and the mid-20th century. And yet the concepts covered in Never Built New York don't seem entirely unfamiliar. Indeed, they reveal a concern for the environment and a preoccupation with space that are still on the minds of New York City residents today.--Katie Hiler "Science Friday"

revelatory--Martin Filler "The New York Review of Books"

the impression one gets from flipping through Never Built New York is one of visionary ambition for a city that's often remained architecturally conservative, partly due to space limitations and partly because of bureaucratic city planning.--Allison Meier "Hyperallergic"

[New York] appears as a tumultuous construction site where radical creative enclaves, quixotic engineering proposals in the name of efficiency, and proud civic-engagement movements compete for disparate visions of a city that always could (or could never) have been.-- "Metropolis Magazine"

A wonderful funland and/or twisted hellscape...some of the most outrageous architectural and urban planning ideas from more than 150 years of New York City history.--Raphael Pope-Sussman "The Gothamist"

By any standard, this is a fascinating scholarly tour de force, ultimately paralleling in its brilliant ambition the infinite spectrum of its subject matter.--Kenneth Frampton "Ware Professor of Architecture, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Columbia University"

Captivating architectural plans that didn't get built give a glimpse of what the Big Apple could have looked like--Clemence Michallon "Daily Mail"

Compiling nearly 200 plans that came to naught, Never Built New York (Metropolis Books) imagines an alternative city of fairy-castle skyscrapers, pneumatic tubes, man-made islands, and river-spanning jetports.-- "Elle Decor"

If you believe New York City's ongoing infestation of sliver towers and chain stores is ruining the town you love, you may find some small cheer in knowing how much worse things could be. Never Built New York provides detailed, copiously illustrated accounts of citywide plans spanning a century - a few intriguing, others fanciful, many examples of outright vandalism - that highlight how technological change commercial exigencies, and architectural vanity could combine to distastefully ill effect.--Albert Mobilio "Bookforum"

Imaginative... a catalog of dashed dreams.--Sam Roberts "The New York Times"

It's hard to think of city that has been the object of such intense dreams and desires for architects--and yet so elusive and hard to get--as New York. The building concepts in this book are imaginative, opinionated attempts to compete for New York's attention and shape its future, knowing that a mark left on this city will be forever felt around the world.--Paola Antonelli "Senior Curator, Architecture & Design, and Director, Research & Development, The Museum of Modern Art"

Just as compelling as the extraordinary collections of drawings is the vivid language the authors use to tell the projects' stories. Goldin and Lubell, whose editorial tone ranges from sarcastic to critical, introduce the reader to the people behind these visionary projects, giving us glimpses of their dreams and obsessions.--Guglielmo Mattioli "Arch Daily"

Retro and futuristic, Never Built New York is perfect for dreamers, conceptual-design lovers, and those with an inclination towards paradoxical "what ifs?" An architectural and philosophical tour-de-force.--Amber C. Snider "The Culture Trip, Editors' Top Pick 2016"

Sure, New York has plenty of icons -- the Empire State and Chrysler buildings, the Statue of Liberty, Grand Central Terminal. But as this book makes clear, you could create a pretty good city from the schemes that failed. Flipping through it is like taking a trip to that city.--Fred A. Bernstein "Introspective Magazine"

The best architecture and design books of 2016-- "Curbed"

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... an inverse history of a city that never was.--Harriet Thorpe "Wallpaper"

The unfinished fantasy of New York City, this reminds us all, is of a thousand competing ideas canceling one another out -- with envy, greed, destruction and lethargy -- and arriving half by accident at a complicated compromise that everyone can more or less live with, and even come to love.--Will Heinrich "The New York Times"

About the Author

Sam Lubell has written seven books about architecture: Never Built New York, Midcentury Modern Architecture Guide, Never Built Los Angeles, Julius Shulman Los Angeles: The Birth of a Modern Metropolis, Paris 2000+, London 2000+ and Living West. He is a contract writer for Wired and has written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine, New York Magazine, Architect, The Architect's Newspaper, Architectural Record, Architectural Review, Wallpaper*, Contract and other publications. He co-curated the A+D Architecture and Design Museum, Los Angeles, exhibition Never Built Los Angeles in 2013. He lives in New York City.

Greg Goldin is co-author of Never Built Los Angeles (Metropolis Books, 2013) and was co-curator of the exhibition Never Built Los Angeles, which premiered at the A+D Architecture and Design Museum, Los Angeles, in July 2013. He was the recipient of a coveted Getty Research Institute grant for Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A. in 2011. For more than a decade, he was the architecture critic at Los Angeles magazine. His work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Architectural Record, Architect's Newspaper, Rolling Stone, Playboy and dozens of other magazines. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.

Architect Daniel Libeskind is an international figure in architecture and urban design. As Principal Design Architect for Studio Libeskind, Mr. Libeskind speaks widely on the art of architecture in universities and professional summits. The Studio has completed buildings that range from museums and concert halls to convention centers, university buildings, hotels, shopping centers and residential towers. His architecture and ideas have been the subject of many articles and exhibitions, influencing the field of architecture and the development of cities and culture. Mr. Libeskind lives in New York with his wife and business partner, Nina Libeskind.