Four Famed American Structures That Almost Looked Radically Different

Mount Rushmore. The Washington Monument. The Empire State Building. These are some of the most familiar, most photographed structures in the country. But though they seem unchangeable to us, all of these icons came close to looking very different than they do today.

Over the past few years, we've looked at the unbuilt world in a number of different ways: Monuments. Airports. Skylines. Bridges. But while the radical, rejected proposals for familiar are buildings are fun, it's also interesting to look at how the actual built designs were edited—even during the construction process.

These structures took decades and millions to build, so it's no surprise their forms were they result of years of contention and revision. But what is surprising? The small tweaks that completely altered their present-day designs...