Antoni Gaudí left behind designs for a monumental Manhattan hotel that was never built.
In May 1908, the story goes, two U.S. businessmen visited Gaudí in Barcelona to convince him to design a hotel for New York City. One of the businessmen was supposedly the president of the New York and New Jersey Railroad Company (and future Treasury secretary), William Gibbs McAdoo.
The building that Gaudí proposed was unlike anything New York’s cast-iron Beaux-Arts skyline had seen.
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The exact location for the proposed tower is unknown, but a group of architects and historians argued that it was intended for the site of the first World Trade Center towers and put it forward for the Ground Zero memorial design competition in 2003. Needless to say, it was not chosen.
As befits a mysterious project like this, there are a number of theories as to why the hotel was never built. Some believe it was the budget that would have been required, or that it was the amount of time (an estimated eight years) it would have taken to complete. Others with a greater flair for the dramatic argue that it was canceled because Gaudí fell sick, or that his political leanings meant he did not like that the hotel was for the wealthy.
In 1971, the monograph was bought by Professor Juan Bassegoda i Nonell, the now deceased former curator of the Real Catedra Gaudí at the University of Barcelona. Included in the monograph were multiple sketches of the plans attributed to Gaudí. Matamala, who would have been a teenager toiling away in Gaudí’s studio at the time of the plan, also made ten drawings of his own based on his memory of what Gaudí was working on. Bassegoda told the New York Times in 2003 that ''for 40 years I have been studying Gaudí's works, and I am sure the drawings are authentic.’'
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