Picture this: The province has offered to build a rapid transit system for Hamilton, but some local politicians are skeptical. With the issue set to go back to council for a new vote, it's a hot topic of conversation.

• • •

And so is Raiders of the Lost Ark. Because it's 1981.

Hamilton's history is filled with building, planning, and transit proposals that never left the drawing board.

For any number of reasons — economic, political, practical — the ambitions of the Ambitious City have their limits.

Sometimes that "unbuilt" history repeats itself.

In the case of the 1981 transit plan, regional council voted against construction of an elevated transit system that would have looped around the downtown core before tunnelling up the mountain to run along Upper James Street to Mohawk Road.

In this Spectator photograph from May 1981, Suzanne Boutin, community relations coordinator for the Hamilton-Wentworth Rapid Transit Project Office, inspects a model of MacNab Street station in Hamilton's proposed elevated transit system. Hamilton's topography and population made it attractive as a demonstration city for the driverless magnetically-propelled trains that had been developed by the Urban Transportation Development Corporation, a provincial crown corporation.

The province was paying for the planning costs and, on an even split with the federal government, had offered to pay 90 per cent of the construction costs.

But regional council withdrew their support in the face of community opposition and questions over the need for the system.

The technology was later used in Scarborough — an installation that today is set to be replaced by a controversial subway.

Did Hamilton make the right choice in 1981? Reasonable people can disagree.

But that 1981 proposal was far from unique as a significant "road not taken." There have been dozens of them, going right back to George Hamilton's original plan for his namesake city.

A surviving copy of that plan, dating from around 1816, shows a public square at what is now the southwest corner of Main and John streets. It would later contain Prince's Square, in front of the Wentworth County Courthouse. But for reasons that remain unclear, land for a companion square on the east side of John Street was conveyed into private ownership.

Today, an uninformed passerby would have no idea that anything was missing.

The same would be true of Christ's Church Cathedral. In the 1870s, the entrance to the neo-Gothic landmark was set back from James Street North in anticipation that a tower designed by architect Henry Langley would be built at a future date, when funds were available. Almost a century and a half later, that date is still pending.

Christ's Church Cathedral was set back from James Street North to accommodate a tower — never built — that architect Henry Langley designed in 1873. In 1917, the engineer and city planner Noulan Cauchon had even grander visions. A plan that he prepared for the city would have turned Ferguson Avenue into Memorial Boulevard, Hamilton's own Champs-Élysées.

The boulevard — 152 metres wide — would have started at a marine landing at the harbour. In the area of Cannon Street, it would have branched into a traffic circle, dominated by a monumental train station, before terminating at a semicircular amphitheatre carved into the escarpment.

In 1917, the engineer and city planner Noulan Cauchon proposed rebuilding Ferguson Avenue into a grand boulevard. As shown in this illustration by architect Francis Swales, it would have featured a traffic circle dominated by a monumental new train station. It was an astonishing vision, but Cauchon's plan languished as the federally regulated railways refused to consider the joint train station, a key aspect of the scheme.

In Cauchon's view, Memorial Boulevard would have created a new focal corridor for Hamilton.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

A similar idea surfaced almost 50 years later, in the city's 1965 downtown urban renewal scheme.

Mayor Victor Copps points to the location of the Salada Planetarium on a model of the proposed Civic Square redevelopment, December 1965. Looking on are (left) Grant Horsey, the chairman of the board of Salada Foods, and Arthur Beeby, Salada president. As proposed by the consulting planners Murray V. Jones and Associates, the city would raze almost all the buildings in the downtown blocks bounded by Bay, James and Main streets, and what is now York Boulevard. In their place would rise a civic-commercial complex called Civic Square.

In the western part of Civic Square, a landscaped mall was to be anchored by City Hall in the south, and a new theatre-auditorium in the north. Commercial and public buildings were to line either side of the mall, with a planetarium at the centre.

In 1967, the city sought a private developer to construct the commercial portion of Civic Square, north of King Street (incorporating what would become Jackson Square). The original plan was subsequently reworked, in part to make way for more revenue-generating space. The result was the loss of the landscaped mall proposed by Jones.

Even so, the marble-clad Education Centre, at the northeast corner of Bay and Main streets, continued to provide a link to the original 1965 vision.

It had been designed by architect Joseph Singer in anticipation of its ultimately flanking the new mall. It's a link that was lost in 2012 with the building's demolition. Today, those in the know can look across Main Street from city hall and imagine what might have been.

George Hamilton's original plan for Hamilton, circa 1816. At the centre of the townsite are two public squares, at what are now the southeastern and southwestern corners of John and Main streets. The western square became the site of the Wentworth County Courthouse, while the land for the eastern square was sold for private development. Unbuilt Hamilton events An exhibit based on the projects from the book "Unbuilt Hamilton" is on view at the Art Gallery of Hamilton from September 24 to February 20.

Admission is free.

Osbaldeston will give free illustrated talks at the Art Gallery of Hamilton on October 28 (reception at 7 p.m. followed by talk at 7:30), and at the Hamilton Central Library, on December 3 at 2 p.m.

URBAN PLANNING: City grants key incentive for downtown development

LRT can 'activate' downtown Hamilton: McMaster study concludes

Hamilton's ambitious development plan, down by the bay