http://24.46.42.210:1818/Sinehead/Gaudi2.html
Can Antonio Gaudi's
Grand Hotel
replace the Twin Towers?
IN 1908, THE GREAT CATALONIAN ARCHITECT Antonio Gaudi was retained to
design a grand hotel for New York City. The location chosen was the site
upon which the-twin-towered World Trade Center would eventually be built
between 1962 and 1974. This American patron of Gaudi was an extremely
affluent financier who actually owned the land bounded on the north by
Vesey Street, on the south by Liberty Street, on the east by Church Street,
and on the west by West Street (which later became connected with the West
Side Highway). Of course, at the beginning of the 20th century, the
financier's actual land holdings were not as sharply defined by streets as
the World Trade Center would become. Then the lower west side of Manhattan
was zoned for low residential and light commercial buildings, such as shops
that sold parts for wireless telegraphy and crystal sets. How the landowner
came to believe he could obtain a zoning variance that would allow him to
build what would have been the first really tall skyscraper for New York
City remains only one of the many mysteries surrounding this project.
Perhaps the fact that the American architect Cass Gilbert (1859-1934) had
just finished a modest-sized gothic skyscraper on West Street (1905-07), a
trial run for the huge Woolworth Building (1911-13) built on Broadway near
City Hall Park, that became the financier's impetus.
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