The City That Never Was

the long version

For hundreds of years New Yorkers have been trying, with varying degrees of success, to change their city. Urban planner Shanor here looks at schemes and proposals that were never realized. Dividing the book into six sections -- streets, public buildings, transportation, bridges, parks and monuments -- she offers an original and amusing perspective on the Big Apple's history. Picture zeppelins moored on the spire of the Empire State building, or a replica of a French World War I battlefield -- complete with trenches -- in Central Park. Imagine a wood-and-plaster "Victory Arch" in Times Square composed of palm fronds and "what looked like totem poles topped with bison heads." Consider the possibility of a Brooklyn-Battery bridge , a 26-foot-high Torah scroll monument (proposed for Riverside Park), or a moving sidewalk on Broadway -- one of the answers to the horse distemper epidemic of 1871. This carefully researched volume is thoroughly pleasant to read.