CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/28/2016

Never Built New York on Science Friday!

Reproduced from Metropolis Books' Holiday Gift bestseller, Never Built New York, Frank Lloyd Wright's 1959 Key Project for Ellis Island proposed "casual, inspired living, minus the usual big-city clamour." The last commission Wright accepted before his death in April of the same year, it was a car-less development plan for the recently decommissioned Ellis Island featuring moving sidewalks and a circular podium superimposed on the Island's rectangular shape, upon which would rest apartments for 7,500 residents. Towers supported by suspension cables would have contained more apartments and a 500-room hotel. The domes were meant for theaters, hospitals, churches, schools, a library and a sports arena. An "agora" embedded in the landscape was earmarked for a planetarium, cinema, shops, banks, restaurants and nightclubs. A yacht basin would have accommodated 450 boats. Hear more about this project and others on NPR's Science Friday!