Incredible US Megaprojects That Were Left Unfinished - What Went Wrong?

Incredible projects that failed to come to fruition

The world could have looked very different if just a fraction of the most fantastical megaprojects ever proposed had made it past the drawing board. Instead, constructions that would have changed the landscapes of cities and pushed the boundaries of human ingenuity have been long forgotten, until now. 

Click or scroll on to discover some of the most jaw-dropping developments that never happened, for good or bad...

All dollar amounts in US dollars.

Arcade Railway, New York, USA

New York's first subway of sorts dates back to an 1867 article in Scientific American Magazine. Dubbed the "Arcade Railway", the visionaries behind this megaproject called for a repurposing of the city's roads as railways and the construction of raised canopies for carriages and pedestrians.

However, business owners opposed the idea, believing it would harm sales, and the plan was scrapped.

General Ulysses S. Grant Memorial Bridge, Washington DC, USA

Reminiscent of London's Tower Bridge, this distinctive Neo-Gothic beauty, imagined here by 911Metallurgist, was proposed by architecture firm Smithmeyer & Pelz in 1887 as a homage to General Ulysses S. Grant.

The US Congress wasn't too keen on facilitating a memorial to Grant and blocked funding of the design, eventually giving the all-clear for the more run-of-the-mill Neoclassical Arlington Memorial Bridge. 

Coney Island Globe Tower, New York, USA

Architect Samuel Friede caused a sensation in May 1906 when he published his plans to build a 700-foot (213m) dome in Coney Island. The building was intended to house the world's largest theme park, a hotel, casinos, and a roller rink.

Friede set out to raise $1.5 million – $51 million (£40m) in today's money – offering investors unrealistic returns to secure their cash. The project experienced delay after delay, and in 1908, it was revealed to be an elaborate fraud. 

Antoni Gaudí's Hotel Attraction, New York, USA

The Big Apple would have given Barcelona a run for its money in the architecture stakes if Antoni Gaudí's skyscraper plan had been realised. Designed in 1908, the eye-catching tower would have played home to a cultural centre, hotel, and restaurants and would have stood 1,180 feet (360m) tall.

Details of the project only surfaced in 1956, and it's unclear exactly why the magical skyscraper was never built. 

Burnham Plan, Chicago, USA

Chicago might have been nicknamed Paris on the Prairie had Daniel Burnham's seminal 1909 plan been fully realised. The eminent architect strove to beautify the Windy City with Neoclassical civic buildings, grand piazzas, broad avenues, and expansive parks.

Some aspects of the plan were implemented, but Burnham's vision fell out of favour during the Great Depression.

Lincoln Memorial pyramid, Washington DC, USA

The 1911 competition to design a Washington DC memorial to President Abraham Lincoln was hotly contested but eventually whittled down to two famed architects: Henry Bacon and John Russell Pope.

The latter proposed several jaw-dropping designs, including a ziggurat, a Mayan temple, and this pyramid creation. Bacon ultimately won out with his Greek Doric temple design.

Skyscraper bridges, New York, USA

In an attempt to help solve New York City's issues with congestion, as well as its housing shortage, architect Raymond Hood came up with this awe-inspiring plan in 1925 for a series of bridges over the Hudson River, complete with numerous 60-storey towers.

The towers would be filled with apartments, while the bridges would have boasted amenities such as shops and theatres. Very few took the idea seriously, but Hood went on to design several of the city's iconic Art Deco buildings, including Rockefeller Center and the RCA Tower. 

Civic Center, Los Angeles, USA

Frank Lloyd Wright entered this futuristic mega-structure into a 1925 contest to design a new civic centre for Los Angeles. It featured sunken roads, terraced walkways, and a number of monumental buildings housing various civic agencies.

Wright's design wasn't chosen – and neither were any others for that matter. The city and the county each had its own preferred design, and neither would concede!

Mother's Memorial, Washington DC, USA

One of a number of immense monuments planned for Washington DC in the early 20th century, the Mother's Memorial was supported by Daisy Calhoun, the founder and head of the Women’s Universal Alliance. Standing 297 feet (90m) tall, the memorial, imagined here by NeoMam Studios for CashNetUSA, would have been topped by a heroic torch-bearing mother.

Calhoun ended up in court with the designer William Clark Noble, who claimed she owed him the work. After a month-long trial, the judge dismissed the case, and Noble had a heart attack on the spot. While Calhoun attempted to work with other architects and fundraise for the memorial, the plan was never realised.

Roosevelt Island Civic Center, New York, USA

Now home to numerous nondescript condominium blocks, New York's Roosevelt Island was packed with prisons, asylums, quarantine centres, and a workhouse at the turn of the century, when it was called Blackwell's Island. Eager to transform the depressing area, architect Thomas J. George came up with this handsome design in 1904 for a Neoclassical civic complex including a bridge crossing the river.

Unfortunately it was considered too idealistic, and possibly even a publicity stunt for George's firm, which snapped up the contract to design the iconic Art Deco-style City Services Building (now known as 70 Pine) in Manhattan.

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Manhattan airport, New York, USA

An airport on a roof covering 144 blocks in Midtown Manhattan – what could possibly go wrong? This bizarre plan was the brainchild of real estate developer William Zeckendorf and featured in a 1946 issue of Life magazine.

As might have been expected, the projected $3 billion price tag ($47bn/£37bn in today's money), not to mention the massive disruption the megaproject would have caused, scuppered Zeckendorf's dream. 

Democracy Uniting the World, San Pedro, California

Intended as a Statue of Liberty for the West Coast, the 480-feet (146m) Democracy Uniting the World monument was designed in 1954 to inspire Asian countries to embrace democracy.

The San Pedro structure was championed by LA County Supervisor John Anson Ford but failed to excite major philanthropists or the general public.

The Illinois, Chicago, USA

Soaring majestically into the Chicago sky, the mile-high Illinois skyscraper was designed by renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1956.

Unfeasible, impractical, and outrageously expensive, Wright's supertall skyscraper was never built. Its spirit lives on in the current tallest building in the world, Dubai's Burj Khalifa, which it partly inspired.

Manhattan Dome, New York City, USA

In 1960, trailblazing engineer Buckminster Fuller conjured up a geodesic dome spanning Midtown Manhattan that would regulate weather and the city's ecosystem.

Taking up two miles (3.2km) of the island, the mile-high dome would have warmed the city in winter, cooled it in summer, and cleaned the air. Though a fascinating futuristic idea, the megaproject was completely unfeasible.

Triumphant Elephant, Paris, France

Imagined here in 2018 by NeoMam Studios for now defunct firm On Stride Financial, this monumental elephant was dreamt up by visionary architect Charles Ribart in 1758. It would have taken pride of place at the end of the Champs-Élysées, where the Arc de Triomphe now stands.

Ribart's design was rejected, though a similar monument, the Elephant of the Bastille, was commissioned by Napoléon in 1808. Unfortunately, a proper structure was never realized, and only a plaster model was built. It was later demolished. 

Twin London Bridges, London, UK

In 1799, a competition was held to design a replacement for the medieval London Bridge. Among the proposals was this idea by George Dance the Younger, who envisaged two bridges 300 feet apart, with one reserved for northbound traffic and the other for traffic flowing south of the river.

Most striking of all were the two sweeping piazzas on either side of the bridges. The proposal was rejected in favor of John Rennie's more conventional design.

1802 Channel Tunnel, UK/France

While a tunnel under the English Channel linking the UK and France eventually came to fruition in 1994, for centuries a slew of historical proposals failed to get off the drawing board. First suggested by Nicolas Desmaret in 1751, the earliest genuine Channel tunnel proposal was this 1802 plan by French engineer Albert Mathieu-Favier for a two-bore tunnel that would have been used by horse-drawn stagecoaches and featured huge ventilation chimneys.

Various other doomed designs were proposed over the years, including one endorsed by Napoléon and another which consisted of two railway tunnels that met on an artificial island in the middle of the Channel.

Trafalgar Square pyramid, London, UK

Championed by MP Sir Frederick William Trench, plans for this bizarre 300-foot pyramid on Trafalgar Square made it all the way to a public exhibition in 1815, but the construction cost estimate – the equivalent of $142 million in today's money – proved prohibitive.

Instead, the land was cleared and Nelson's Column was erected on the site. This image, commissioned by Barratt Homes, shows how the 22-step pyramid would have looked.

Crystal Palace Tower, London, UK

London's vast glass and iron Crystal Palace was built in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851 and moved to Sydenham in South London when the exhibition finished. Before the structure was relocated, architect Charles Burton proposed transforming it into a 1,000-foot proto-skyscraper.

The building may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but it almost certainly would have toppled to the ground under its own weight.

Tatlin's Tower, Saint Petersburg, Russia

This proposed Monument to the Third International was an iron, glass, and steel structure conceived by architect Vladimir Tatlin in 1919 to memorialize the Russian Revolution.

The 1,300-foot tower was intended for the banks of the River Neva in Petrograd (modern-day St Petersburg). It was never constructed due to a lack of materials and doubts over its structural integrity.

Depthscraper, Tokyo, Japan

Japanese architects sought to design seismically safe structures after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 devastated Tokyo. A number of ideas were suggested, some less feasible than others, including this "depthscraper" which featured in the November 1931 issue of American magazine Everyday Science and Mechanics.

Plan Macià, Barcelona, Spain

During the early 1930s, Le Corbusier brought his brutalist vision to Barcelona. He planned to demolish the city's Eixample district – which abounds with wonderful Art Nouveau buildings – and replace it with sterile high-rise blocks and expansive green spaces.

The Plan Macià, as the proposal was called, was ultimately thwarted by the Spanish Civil War and the ensuing Franco dictatorship. This resulted in the wilful neglect of the city center, which some might see as a blessing in disguise.

Palace of the Soviets, Moscow, Russia

In the early 1930s, Neoclassical architect Boris Iofan won a competition to build Moscow's Palace of the Soviets, a gigantic 1,624-foot structure topped with a huge statue of Lenin. The edifice was to be built on the site of Christ the Saviour Cathedral, which was bulldozed in 1931 in preparation for its construction.

Work began in 1937 but stopped during World War II and was later abandoned. The cathedral was painstakingly rebuilt in the late 1990s.  

Westminster Airport, London, UK

A wacky idea for an elevated airport straddling the River Thames at Westminster appeared in Popular Science magazine back in 1934. This render by Barratt Homes shows how it might have looked.

Though clearly unfeasible, the megaproject was realized in some form with the completion of London City Airport in 1987.

Trans-Saharan Railway, Algeria/French West Africa

First proposed in the 1870s, plans for a railway traversing the Sahara Desert were embraced by Vichy France during World War II, and work began on the megaproject in 1941.

Collaborating with the Nazis, the Vichy government used forced labor, and many workers died constructing the link between the north and south of Africa. Only a few miles of the line were completed before the megaproject was abandoned in 1944.

Concrete Soho, London, UK

This 1954 plan by architects Geoffrey Jellicoe, Ove Arup, and Edward Mills would have wiped out London's Soho district and replaced its Georgian and Victorian buildings with five tower blocks built on a raised concrete platform.

The development would have also featured glass-bottomed canals, landscaped gardens, and tennis courts. Luckily, the local council rejected the extraordinarily damaging scheme, saving London's Soho.

The Walking City, London, UK

Cooked up in the mid-1960s by experimental architect Ron Herron, the Walking City consists of numerous immense pod-like megastructures on legs, which have the ability to "walk" from location to location.

Exactly how these supersized pods, which resemble the tripods in the film War of the Worlds, would have moved is anyone's guess.

Regent Street monorail, London, UK

During the 1960s, the use of public transport in London began to fall while more cars on the roads led to a surge in traffic. As a result, plans were floated for a monorail system to ease congestion on the city's busiest streets.

The UK capital appears to have dodged a bullet. Proposals for the clunky, concrete monorail on Regent Street, which would connect Piccadilly and Oxford Circuses, would have blocked the views of the beautiful, elegant buildings that make up the roads. The council ultimately decided against the odd idea.

Concrete Covent Garden, London, UK

A harsh Brutalist redevelopment of London's historic Covent Garden was floated by the Greater London Council in 1968. Luckily, the ghastly revamp was ditched following protests by local residents.

The area, which had been home to the city's wholesale fruit and vegetable market, was sympathetically repurposed as a shopping, dining, and entertainment destination, retaining its period character. 

Dover-Calais EuroRoute Bridge, UK/France

One of four shortlisted proposals for a link between the UK and France, the EuroRoute was designed by French architect Jean-Paul Viguier in 1985. Rendered here by 911Metallurgist, the crossing would have consisted of a 13-mile tunnel between two islands, which would then be linked to the mainland by bridges.

The decision-makers ultimately opted for the Channel Tunnel instead.

Hyperbuilding, Bangkok, Thailand

Another mind-boggling concept structure from the 1990s, OMA's Hyperbuilding would have been quite a sight to behold. Housing a mini city of 120,000 people, the structure (over half a mile tall) would have been kitted out with a plethora of train lifts, gondolas, and cable cars to transport residents and office workers between its many floors.

Nakheel Tower, Dubai, UAE

Soaring 3,300 feet into the clouds, Dubai's Nakheel Tower would have been the tallest structure on the planet, easily surpassing the UAE's Burj Khalifa and the first to rise more than half a mile.

Proposed in 2002, the 200-story skyscraper had an estimated completion date of 2020. However, it fell victim to the financial crisis, which decimated the Dubai real estate market, and was canceled in early 2009.

Sky Mile Tower, Tokyo, Japan

An exceedingly ambitious mega-structure proposed for Tokyo, Sky Mile Tower, which, as the name suggests, would stand a mile tall, was conceived in 2016 by US architecture firm Kohn Pedersen Fox.

The 420-story eco-skyscraper would feature everything from floating farms to feed its 55,000 inhabitants to technology that could harvest water from clouds. However, the chances of it ever being built are very slim indeed.

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