Vision of New York That May Be
In a May 1924 New York Times Magazine article, George MacAdam predicted how New York City would transform in the decades to come.
Some predictions were accurate, like electricity replacing coal.
Are cities always to be coal-burning centres [sic]? Science answers emphatically, "No!" ... It is not improbable that the same generation that has seen the coal cook stove supplanted by the gas range, will also see the steam boiler banished from the cellar, the gas-belching chimney razed from the city roof.
Others, like the city turning into the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, not so much:
A picture of New York of the future: a city whose streets are lined with terraced cliffs of Gothic and Renaissance workmanship, the terraces a-bloom with flowers and shrubs and trees; a city of a multitude of aerial gardens — tiny forests of pine and cedar, cascades of vines, colorful patches of blossoms, 100, 200, 300 feet above the street level: the Hanging Gardens of Babylon translated to the uses of a generation that has devised the skyscraper.
Would have been nice.
Vision of New York That May Be
Published: Sunday, May 25, 1924