Gaudi’s New York Grand Hotel

( words)

Few people know that in 1908 the catalan architect Antoni Gaudí (1852 - 1926) imagined a skyscraper for New York City. The project was commissioned in May 1908 by an unknown american businessmen wanting a big hotel for New York.. Planned at a total height of 360 metres, it was probably unrealistic for its time. Only some original sketches survived as well as some drawings by sculptor Llorenç Matamala i Pinyol, friend and collaborator of Gaudí.

The shape of this huge tower would have been reminiscent of the unfinished church of La Sagrada Familia designed by Gaudí in Barcelona. With rooms in all the facades and some immense interiors, five big halls would have been superposed, each one representing the culture of a different continent. That such building, with all it's organic forms, would become the absolute NYC's new attraction of the moment.

The drawings for the Attraction Hotel were proposed as a project for the rebuilding of the Ground Zero of Manhattan. The Hotel Attraction is completed in an alternate reality as the "Grand Hotel" as seen in Fringe episode "over there".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD0f_56hSTc