The iconic National Cathedral in Washington DC is such a striking structure when you see it on the skyline that it’s hard to imagine that anyone could have conceived of a different form for the building that was financed by the Episcopal Church. But in an article on the Smithsonian website on DC monuments that were designed but never built, you can see that original plan was very different than what we have now.
““Many people assume it was a foregone conclusion that it was Gothic,” says Moeller. But the original design for the National Cathedral was in a Renaissance style. Architect Ernest Flagg, of New York, supplied the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation with drawings. The cathedral had a 208-foot-tall rotunda, a dome with cutouts of simple Greek crosses and, notes Moeller, a particularly interesting entryway. “It is a real niche, pulling people in,” he says. “There was a certain sculptural sense to that. I can imagine that being a very memorable experience.””
Follow the link to see the picture here.