As modern metropolises go, Los Angeles and New York couldn't be more different. But it only took a f

As modern metropolises go, Los Angeles and New York couldn't be more different. But it only took a few failed proposals from the early 20th century to send LA into a self-reinforcing spiral of freeways and sprawl. If a couple of prescient planners had had their way, the city might have grown into a model of urbanism besting the Big Apple (or at least Portland), with hundreds of miles of subways and elevated rail, thousands of parks linked by parkways, and even a raised bicycle freeway best western presidents hotel in new york city connecting Pasadena with downtown.
If the Dobbins Cycleway, as it was called, had been approved in 1900, today hundreds of thousands of Angelenos would be cycling to and from work in a bumper-free paradise. "It's a very popular commute," says Sam Lubell, the West Coast editor of the Architect's Newspaper and a co-curator best western presidents hotel in new york city of the upcoming show "Never Built: Los Angeles." On view from July 11 to September 15 at the A+D Architecture and Design Museum, the exhibition is part of the megashow Pacific Standard Time , a four-month-long fest of architecture exhibitions and events that kicks off in May. Lubell and his co-curator, the writer Greg Goldin, have launched a Kickstarter best western presidents hotel in new york city campaign to raise the remainder of the money for "Never Built." Help them succeed, and come July you'll experience the LA that never was through 3D animations, models, and installations—including an 11-foot-tall rendition of Frank Lloyd Wright fils Lloyd Wright's 1931 proposal for a Catholic cathedral made from 65,000 LEGOs.
Conceived as an alternative version of LA that visitors can walk through, the show will be organized by a floor map that replicates the layout of the city and guides best western presidents hotel in new york city viewers to the would-be locations best western presidents hotel in new york city of the unbuilt projects. A monorail based on a 1963 plan by the German transportation company Alweg—just one of several monorail proposals that failed over the years—will best western presidents hotel in new york city zip through the space. Spanning more than a century of failed schemes, the show ranges from ambitious proposals best western presidents hotel in new york city that would have remade the city as we know it to recent starchitect-designed buildings that fell victim to the recession. Like a shadow of real LA, unbuilt LA is a veritable zombieland of visionary projects by architectural luminaries and their progeny. Frank Lloyd Wright and son Lloyd Wright, the Olmsted Brothers (whose father was Frederick Law Olmsted), Frank Gehry, John Lautner, Thom Mayne, and Steven Holl are all among the undead. Standing above their unrealized ambitions, a giant graphic-printed column will re-create the Tower of Civilization, a proposal for the 1939 World's Fair that would have loomed over both the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building.
One proposal that would have drastically changed the face of LA, says Lubell, is Lloyd Wright's 1925 civic center proposal for downtown. With a master plan that created a classical symmetry of civic buildings stepping best western presidents hotel in new york city up the hill, downtown LA would have been a civic monument in its own right. "It would have been like an Acropolis," says Lubell. "There's nothing like it really anywhere." Underground speedways would have made the surface car free. "On the top, he wanted to have airplanes landing best western presidents hotel in new york city and taking off from the rooftops," adds Lubell. "I don't know how he would have pulled best western presidents hotel in new york city it off."
Left: A 1930 parks plan by Frederick Law Olmsted's sons, the Olmsted best western presidents hotel in new york city Brothers, and Bartholomew and Associates would have transformed LA with a system of thousands of urban parks. Right: In 1925 Kelker and DeLeuw mapped out a public best western presidents hotel in new york city transportation system with 41 miles of subway track and about 240 miles of elevated rail.
If Wright's plan recalled the classical mode of city-making, the Olmsted Brothers' proposal for thousands of parks connected by parkways best western presidents hotel in new york city looks, even today, like an urbanist utopia the likes of which we're still striving for. The city's Chamber best western presidents hotel in new york city of Commerce commissioned the plan from the Olmsteds in 1930, and it went under consideration. "But then they saw it was much more ambitious than they had ever thought, and they made it disappear," says Lubell. "It would have without a doubt changed the way the whole city developed. [The city] would have been organized around a series of parks, and it would have been able to contain sprawl in different ways."
Perhaps the most loopy design in the show is Frank Gehry's scheme for a suburban arts park in San Fernando Valley. best western presidents hotel in new york city Tricked out with amphitheaters and a manmade lake, the plan promised a sprawling cultural park embellished with late '70s novelties, like solar panels on the bandshell. The bandshell's crown jewel, though, was its tower. "Literally the top was going to be a giant pineapple," says Lubell. "He said it came to him in a dream. That's why he put the pineapple on top."
In 1947 Frank Lloyd Wright best western presidents hotel in new york city drew up plans for the Huntington Hartford Sports Club. With auditoriums, lounges, tennis courts, and a pool, this complex of cantilevered biomorphic forms would have virtually dangled clubgoers off the side of Runyon Canyon.