Let’s imagine New York City but with a massive airport 70 meters above Midtown Manhattan. While this clearly sounds like a ridiculous idea, in the 1940s this was an actual plan for a mega project.
In this article, we’ll look at Insane Megaprojects in the world that Were Never Built !!. Some of these were just insane ideas that didn’t seem practical while others were affected by financial and political constraints which of the following projects would you like to see in reality let us know in the comments below.
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6. The dream airport above New York
Everyone has an image in mind when they think of new york with its cultural landmarks and its iconic skyline but this image could have looked quite different today with an insane plan proposed in the 1940s that would have completely changed Midtown Manhattan.
In 1946 one of new york’s most successful real estate developers William Zechendorff proposed the idea for a rooftop airport in Midtown Manhattan along the shores of the Hudson river. Dubbed new york city’s dream airport, the megastructure would span the length of 144 manhattan blocks with a 70-meter-high deck roughly the size of Central Park. A series of 10-story buildings were to be constructed underneath the deck for waiting areas, ticket offices, and small businesses. The airport wouldn’t just accommodate air travel, the plans included piers for ships from the Hudson river as well as roads and railways beneath the platform.
Estimated to cost 3 billion at the time it would have been the biggest airport project of all time.
The main motivation for this plan was to reduce travel time. In the 1940s new york already had problems with traffic congestion and with all of its major airports outside of manhattan reaching these transit points was often difficult. A midtown airport would have erased the need for travelers to drive to Newark Laguardia or JFK. If built, the airport would have changed new york forever some of the skyscrapers seen today lay in this area, for example, Hudson yards and wouldn’t exist today but also the surrounding area would have been developed quite differently.
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While this idea looks crazy there are obvious reasons why this plan didn’t turn into reality. First of all an airport in the middle of the world’s busiest city would be a nightmare for the residents. This airport was designed to accommodate 68 flights an hour, so people would essentially deal with aircraft noise every minute of the day. In addition, the traffic in New York was a major problem already and with people flooding to midtown for their flights, it would add another congestion headache to the city’s planners. But even if they got approval, it would present major engineering challenges.
Also acquiring the land for the project, clearing up the existing structures in a 144-block radius, and then rebuilding the whole area with an airport on top would probably make it the largest and most complicated mega project in New York’s history. Overall it’s obvious that building an airport 70 meters above new york with surrounding skyscrapers and residents wasn’t going to happen. So while there was excitement for this unparalleled airport, the ambitious plans remained limited to the newspapers.
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5. The most iconic hotel in the world The hotel Attraction
Lets stay in New York and look at another impressive plan from the early 1900s. At that time the city was witnessing a skyscraper boom in 1908, the singer building became the first Skyscraper to cross the height of 150 meters and it would be followed by giants like the Chrysler building and the Empire State building.
Across the Atlantic Ocean, the renowned Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi showed a completely different architectural style with attention to detail and curved shapes. His iconic designs for buildings like Casamila and Casa Battillo based on a celebration of nature and Catalan culture were unlike anything seen in New York. Impressed by Gowdy’s genius, two Businessmen went to Barcelona in 1908 to convince him to create a masterpiece in New York.
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Gowdy was interested and proposed a grand hotel that would soar 360 meters into the sky. The exterior of the building would shine using Alabaster, glass, and tiles while its interior would house restaurants, theaters, concert halls and an exhibition theater at the height of more than 100 meters. At that time, the plans for such a tall building were unprecedented and overwhelming.
However, Gowdy was known for accomplishing the unthinkable. In the end, his plans were never finalized and the reason is that Gowdy had dedicated his life to Barcelona’s most famous landmark the Sagrada Familia in the following years. The hotel Attraction was only at a very early stage and going to New York would mean leaving behind the Sagrada Familia, a project that Gowdy would work on for a total of 43 years until the end of his life.
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The project was ultimately abandoned but never forgotten. It was revived once again in 2003 when some Spanish architects submitted the design for the new world trade center design competition. While Gowdy’s original sketches remain alive to this day, it doesn’t seem like the project will ever be built. But if the hotel Atraxion stood in Manhattan today, it would certainly be one of the most interesting buildings in the world.
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4. The Mile-High Illinois skyscraper
Chicago is widely considered to be the birthplace of the skyscraper and according to one famous proposal, it could have been the runaway leader in the quest for building the tallest skyscraper in the world.
In 1956 architect Frank Lloyd Wright presented his vision for The Illinois, a Mile High skyscraper. The idea was insane because at the time the tallest building in the world was the Empire State building which was less than one-fourth of what The Illinois was proposed to be. Lloyd Wright was against the sprawling cities and wanted to build something that would save space on the ground and take the cities upward.
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His 8-meter tall replica of The Illinois included 528 floors, atomic-powered elevators, and parking for 15,000 cars and 100 helicopters. It was a whole city in itself and Wright said that it could hold all government offices and eliminate the need for other skyscrapers popping up around Chicago. Wright’s proposal was impressive, however, it simply wasn’t doable at the time. In fact, to this day the tallest building in the world is the Burj Khalifa which isn’t even half the height proposed for The Illinois. The realization of wright’s design was never considered which is why there are only a few sketches and models of it still around.
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3. America’s tallest failed skyscraper
We stay in Chicago and take a look at a much more realistic skyscraper which was even under construction almost 50 years after Wright’s proposal, the Chicago Spire was to become the tallest building in the country. And would have kept that record to this day. It was designed by another famous Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, who has designed other impressive projects like the World Trade Center Transportation Hub and Sweden’s Turning Torso.
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The Spire was originally proposed in year 2005 and was taken over by Garrett Kelleher of the Shelburne Corporation for construction. The tower would have had a slender curved design that would rise 610 meters into the Chicago sky. With great enthusiasm, the construction of this project began in 2007.
Because of the slender design, the tower’s foundations had to be very deep. So excavation went 22 meters into the ground. However, just as the foundations were laid down, the progress came to a halt. Like many other projects of the mid-2000s, the great recession played a key role in stopping the Chicago Spire. The major financier of the project, the Anglo-Irish bank was struggling for survival. So automatically, there was no investment to take the construction further. This started a chain reaction of several lawsuits of different parties. And after ongoing financial problems of the project developer, they were forced to suspend construction.
By that time, only the foundation of the spire was completed. In 2013, Shelburne Corporation underwent a bankruptcy reorganization plan and this incredible project that was supposed to rise over Chicago only left a hole in the ground.
Three years later, related midwest took over the site, and after proposing several new plans the Chicago city council approved an updated design for 400 lake shore drive in 2020. This project consists of two staircase-like towers with a height of 267 and 233 meters.
According to the company, construction will begin this year. So there is hope that the site will not remain a hole in the ground forever.
2. Hitler’s plan to build the largest dome in the world “The Volkshalle”
The fall of Nazi Germany finally put an end to Hitler and his terrible cruel acts. It also spelled the end for some of its insanely massive architectural projects. One of which was the planned capital city of Germania and its most important building, The Great Hall. Berlin was supposed to become the capital of the new world named Germania. Hitler wanted to reorganize the city along a central 5-kilometer-long boulevard from the north to the south that would cross with an east-west axis in Berlin.
At the north end of this new central axis, was supposed to be the Great Hall. The sketches for this colossal domed structure were made by Hitler himself. He had visited the Pantheon in Rome during the 1920s and was planning on building something even more impressive and a lot bigger. The dome would rise to a height of 290 meters and was said to be 250 meters wide, making it the most prominent building on the continent. The huge hall on the inside would potentially fit 150 000 people at once.
It was so gigantic that the hall would have been 17 times the volume of Saint Peter’s Basilica.
By building insanely huge architecture Hitler wanted to perpetuate his empire. According to historian Wolfgang Bentz, the great hall was intended to enforce the structures of rule. According to him, this type of architecture was designed to subjugate, overwhelm and seduce people. Barely anything of the plans for Germania were ever built except for a few shell structures.
In the end, the great hall as well as other plans came crashing down with the defeat in 1945 and they are a reflection of the seductive delusions of grandeur and the inhuman ideologies pervasive in Nazi Germany.
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1 The sphere version of the pyramids of Giza
For our last on the list of “Insane Megaprojects in the world that Were Never Built”, we go further back in time to the 18th century in France. This project was said to be dedicated to one of the world’s most important scientists Sir Isaac Newton. In his honor french Architect, Etienne Louis Boule proposed this 150-meter-high Cenotaph that would even surpass the great pyramid of Giza.
While the great pyramid was the burial place of Egyptian emperor Khufu, The Cenotaph was planned to be a memorial for Sir Isaac Newton who rests in London’s Westminster Abbey. As an homage to Newton’s scientific contributions, Boule wanted to build what was the world’s first domed planetarium. Boule dotted the interior of his spherical structure with tiny holes reflecting the positions of the constellations and the planets. During the night, a majestic spherical lamp would illuminate the structure and act like the sun in a universe created by the arrangement of holes on the surface.
However, much like the other projects in this article, his proposal just wasn’t doable at that time. Boule himself would have been aware of that, as he saw architecture not just as a science of building but more as a science of ideas and imaginations. So the Cenotaph remained an incredible idea that didn’t get built.
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